“I think I heard someone speak in Russian,” she said. “But I can’t be sure.”
“You’re pretty sure of that?” Hackberry said.
“Yes, I’d almost swear it was Russian, or at least East European.”
As Hackberry got to his feet, tentacles of pain wrapped around his lower back and his buttocks, sinking into his viscera and then disappearing. He walked Cody Daniels toward the kitchen. “What were you doing out here?” he said.
“I wanted to see if she was all right. Then I left. That’s when I saw this gray truck with an extended cab come down from the hills behind her fence line. It had a smokestack on it, one sticking up by the cab. The only guy I talked to had a mouth full of chewing tobacco and smelled like it, too.”
“What time did you arrive on her property?”
“It was dark. I didn’t note the time.”
“You were looking in her windows?”
“I don’t do things like that.”
“You just drive out to other people’s property in the middle of the night?”
“Yeah, in this case, that’s what I did. I got a better question for you. When’s that dadburn ambulance coming?”
“Why were you suspicious of the truck?” Hackberry said.
“’Cause I thought they might be working for Temple Dowling.”
“You know Dowling?”
“Dowling was at my house. He said he wanted me to spy on Miss Anton.”
“Why would he select you for such a noble enterprise, Reverend?”
“Ask him.”
“Don’t worry, I will.”
“You got the right to think anything you want of me, Sheriff. But I told you the truth. If you don’t like it, that’s-”
“Who were those guys?” Hackberry said.
“It wasn’t Dowling or his people.”
“If they wore masks, how can you be sure?”
“Dowling and his thugs invaded my house and threatened me on my deck. They would have recognized me. These guys didn’t know who I was. What’s so hard to understand about that?”
“Did Dowling offer you money?”
“He mentioned it.”
“What else did he mention?”
“Sir?”
“I know the Dowling family. I know how they work. Is Temple Dowling blackmailing you?”
Cody Daniels’s hand was resting on the kitchen drainboard. His fingers twitched slightly, then became motionless. “I guess you could call it that. No, it’s not up for debate, that’s exactly what he was doing.” His gaze drifted from the side window to the yard. “There’re your deputies and the ambulance coming. Can I talk to your chief deputy a minute?”
“No, you can’t. Did you have a gun or a weapon of any kind when you came back to help Ms. Ling?”
“No, sir.”
“You just did it?”
“Not exactly. My teeth were rattling like Chiclets.”
“What does Dowling have on you, partner?”
“You’ve pulled my sheet. Take your choice.”
“You went down for forgery, but that’s not it, is it?”
“I got no more to say on the subject.”
“It’s the bombing at the abortion clinic, isn’t it?”
“I need to talk to your deputy. It’s important. At least it is to me.”
“Go sit on the gallery and let your mind think cool thoughts. You know who said that? Satchel Paige. He said the key to longevity was to have cool thoughts and not to eat fried food. Why don’t you try that?”
“Why you got it in for me, Sheriff?”
“Because I think you helped blind and mutilate a defenseless woman. Because I think anyone who plants a bomb among unsuspecting people should be stuffed feetfirst into a tree shredder.”
The skin of Cody Daniels’s throat prickled, as though it had just been windburned. “You really mean that?” he said quietly.
“Probably not,” Hackberry said. “But I mean something right close to it.”
“You’re not one given to mercy, Sheriff. I don’t think it’s right to talk to people like that, even the likes of me,” Cody Daniels said. He went outside and sat by himself on the front steps, his face wan, his gaze fixed on the apron of bare earth at his feet.
Hackberry helped the paramedics place Anton Ling on the gurney and take her out to the ambulance. Before they put her inside, she touched his wrist. “I could hear you in the kitchen,” she said. “Don’t be too hard on Reverend Daniels.”
“He has no explanation for being at your house.”
“It was his pride. I shamed and demeaned him in the parking lot at the grocery store. I treated him like human refuse.”
“To my mind, that’s not an unfair description of a clinic bomber.”
“You’re wrong about him,” she said.
“We’ll straighten up your house and lock the doors. I’ll be up to see you at the hospital. In the meantime, I don’t want you to worry about anything. We’ll get the guys who did this.”
“Maybe,” she replied.
“What were they after, Miss Anton?”
“Noie Barnum.”
“No, in the house. What were they looking for?”
“My guess is they’re looking for technical material about the Predator drone.”
“Is it there?”
She shook her head.
“Did Barnum have it on him?”
“To my knowledge, all he brought to this house were his wounds. He stayed in the cottage. I forgot to tell you something. I hurt one of the men who was holding me at the sink. I stabbed him just below the eye with a screwdriver. He’ll have to go to a hospital or see a doctor.”
“You’re a tough lady, Miss Anton.”
“You won’t catch them.”
“Pardon?”
“The men who did this to me have been with us a long time. They’re in our midst every day. We just don’t acknowledge their presence,” she said.
A paramedic closed the back door of the ambulance. Hackberry watched the ambulance drive away, then walked back to the windmill and watched Pam Tibbs and R.C. stringing crime-scene tape from the barn to the front of the house. R.C. was over six feet and had a skeletal frame that looked tacked together from the staves in an apple box, his stomach and buttocks flat, his waist twenty-eight inches, his face perpetually young, his mouth small like a girl’s, his eyes always bright with surprise. He was chewing gum, snapping it in his jaw, his coned-up white straw deputy’s hat slanted down over his brow. “Found a bloody screwdriver that somebody kicked under the counter in the kitchen, Sheriff,” he said.
“Did you bag it?” Hackberry said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. That must be the one Ms. Ling put in a guy’s face.”
“You want to make casts of those tire tracks?”
“That’s a good idea.”
“See the tracks on top of the truck tires? Those are Michelins.”
