“How do you know?”
“I can tell by the width and the tread. They’re brand-new, too. Want to start checking the dealerships?”
“You can identify a Michelin tire just by looking at the tread marks?”
“I only mounted about five hunnerd of them.”
Hackberry glanced at Pam. She brushed at her nose with her wrist, her eyes smiling.
“What are y’all laughing at?” R.C. asked.
“Nothing,” Hackberry said.
“I say something wrong?” R.C. asked.
“No, not at all,” Hackberry said.
“I was just making an observation,” R.C. said, his cheeks reddening.
“We were laughing because you were two jumps ahead of us, R.C.,” Hackberry said. “Don’t tell the voters I said that, or they might take my star away.”
“No, sir, they’re not going to do that,” R.C. said. “They think you’re one of them bleeding-heart liberals, but they trust you to do the right thing more than they trust themselves. How’s that for smarts?”
“On the subject of smarts, what’s with shit-for-brains over there on the steps?” Pam asked, glancing in Cody Daniels’s direction. The sun had broken through the clouds, and her bare arms looked brown and big in the sunlight as she unrolled and tightened the crime-scene tape, her dark mahogany hair that was either sunburned or white on the tips curled against her cheeks, her breasts as firm-looking as softballs against her khaki shirt.
“He says he wants to talk with you about something,” Hackberry replied.
“I think I can forgo the pleasure,” Pam replied.
“Anton Ling says he saved her life.”
“If he did, it was by accident.”
Pam went back to work, stringing the tape behind the barn and around the back of the stucco cottage and the bunkhouse. She secured it to a fence post on the far side of the main house and returned to the windmill, her hair moving in the wind, strands touching her mouth. In moments like these, when she was totally unguarded and unmindful of herself, Hackberry knew in a private place in the back of his mind that Pam Tibbs belonged in that category of exceptional women whose beauty radiated outward through their skin and had little to do with the physical attributes of their birth. In these moments he felt an undefined longing in his heart that he refused to recognize.
“Mind if I see what he wants?” Pam asked.
“Suit yourself,” Hackberry replied.
“Come with me.”
“What for?”
“This is the same guy who claimed I assaulted him. I don’t want him telling lies about anything I say to him now.”
“Then I’d leave him alone.”
“Jesus Christ, Hack, first you tell me the guy wants to talk to me, then you tell me not to talk with him. In between, you tell me he saved someone’s life.”
“What are you laughing at, R.C.?” Hackberry said.
“Not a thing, Sheriff. I was just enjoying the breeze and the freshness of the morning. This cool wind is special. Lordy, what a fine day,” R.C. said, folding his arms over his chest, gazing at the sunlit greenness and clarity of the hills, puffing out his cheeks, sucking his teeth.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Hackberry said.
“Yes, sir,” R.C. said.
Hackberry walked with Pam to the gallery, where Cody Daniels was sitting on the steps in the shadow of the house, staring into space, a bandage taped to his forehead. “You wanted to say something to Chief Deputy Tibbs, Reverend?” Hackberry said.
“I’d like to do it in private, if you don’t object,” Cody Daniels replied.
“Say what’s on your mind. We have work to do,” Pam said.
Cody Daniels looked back and forth, his mouth a tight seam. He fiddled with his shirt buttons and made lines in the dirt with the heel of his shoe. Strands of his hair were stuck inside the tape on his bandage, which gave him the appearance of a disorganized and hapless child. “I apologize for the way I acted when you arrested me. I deliberately provoked you,” he said to Pam.
She touched a nostril with one knuckle and huffed air out her nose. “Is that it?” she said.
“I also made some smart-ass remarks when I was in the holding cell. I’m sorry I did that.”
“What smart-ass remarks?” Pam said.
“I said something to the sheriff. I don’t remember it real clear. I should have kept my mouth shut, that’s all.”
“What remarks?” Pam said.
Cody Daniels wiped a piece of dirt off his face and looked at it. “Just idle, disrespectful stuff that doesn’t mean anything. The kind of things an uneducated and angry man might say. No, ‘angry man’ doesn’t cut it. The kind of thing a half-baked mean-spirited pissant might say. That’s me I’m talking about.”
“What did you say?”
“Sheriff?” Cody Daniels said, raising his eyes to Hackberry’s.
“The man said he was sorry. Why not let it slide?” Hackberry said to Pam.
“Reverend, you’ve got about five seconds to get your head on right,” Pam said.
“Cain’t recall.”
She pulled a braided slapjack from her side pocket and let it hang from her right hand.
“I said I’d rather belly up to a spool of barbed wire,” Cody Daniels said. He knitted his fingers together and twisted them in and out of one another, his teeth clenched, breathing through the side of his mouth as though he had just eaten scalding food, patting the soles of his shoes up and down in the dirt. Hackberry could hear the blades of the windmill rattle to life as R.C. unchained the crankshaft and cupped a drink of water from the pipe.
“What did Sheriff Holland have to say about your remark?” Pam asked.
“He said something about kicking a two-by-four with nails in it up my ass till I’d be spitting splinters. Or something to that effect.”
Pam brushed at her nose again, pushing the slapjack back into her pocket. “What do you think we ought to do with you?”
“You got me,” he replied, shaking his head, his eyes lowered.
“Look at me and answer my question.”
“Shoot me?”
“It’s a possibility,” she said.
“She’s not serious, is she?” Cody Daniels said to Hackberry.
“You’d better believe it, bud,” Hackberry said.
Pam and Hackberry went inside the house and, with two other deputies, began picking up the furniture and sweeping up the glass in the kitchen and the chapel. “Are we doing this because you’re a Catholic?” Pam asked.
Hackberry reset the altar at the front of the chapel and picked up the broken pieces of the statue of the Virgin Mary and laid them on top of the altar. “We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
“Just thought I’d ask,” she said.
“We protect and serve. We treat everybody the same. If others don’t like the way we do things, they can run us off. End of discussion.”
“Who spat in your Cheerios this morning?”
“Stop and consider the image that conjures up. Why don’t you and Maydeen develop a small degree of sensitivity about the language you use? Just once, try a little professionalism.” He propped his broom against the wall, knocking it into the wood.
“My uncle said I put him in mind of a cow with the red scours downloading into a window fan,” she said.
Hackberry gave up. Through the window, he saw Cody Daniels rise from the steps and begin walking down the road toward the highway. Pam saw him, too, and seemed to lose her concentration. She stopped sweeping and blew out her breath. “Is there a shortcut to his place?” she asked.
