sink.
“You got a reason for always making it hard?” Riser said.
“None I can think of.”
“Why didn’t you call me about the homicide south of that Indian’s property?”
“It’s not a federal case. It’s not y’all’s damn business, either.”
“You’re wrong about that, my friend. The victim was a DEA informant.”
“It’s still our case. Stay out of it.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“I’ve been on a need-to-know basis with y’all before. I always had the feeling I was a hangnail.”
“The informant’s name was Hector Lopez. He was a dirty cop from Mexico City who worked both sides of the fence. Our people weren’t entirely comfortable with him. Lopez and a physician once tortured a DEA agent to death.”
“I remember that case. The physician went down for it. Why not the dirty cop?”
“That’s the way it is. I’m sharing this with you because we can help each other.”
The microwave made a dinging sound. Ethan Riser took out the two Styrofoam containers and opened them on the breakfast table. They contained scrambled eggs and hash browns and sausage patties smothered with milk gravy. He took the coffeepot off the stove and set cups and silverware on the table. Hackberry watched him. “Does everything meet the standard here? My house tidy enough, that sort of thing?” he said.
“We talked to Danny Boy Lorca already,” Riser said. “He gave us the name of this guy Krill. Have any idea who he is?”
Hackberry hung his hat on the back of his chair and sat down to eat. “Nothing real specific other than the fact he’s a killer.”
“We think he takes hostages and sells them,” Riser said. “The guy we want is the guy who was on the other end of the cable locked on the dead man’s wrist. We think he’s the federal employee we’ve been looking for.”
“What kind of federal employee is he?”
Riser went silent. Hackberry put down his fork and knife. “Tell you what, Ethan,” he said. “This is my home. People can be rude whenever and wherever they want. But not in my kitchen and not at my table.”
“He’s a Quaker who should have been screened out of the job he was assigned to. It’s the government’s fault.”
“I guess Jefferson should have gotten rid of Benjamin Franklin at first opportunity.”
“Franklin was a Quaker?” When Hackberry didn’t answer, Riser said, “Your flowers are lovely. I told you my father was a botanist, didn’t I? He grew every kind of flower mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.”
Hackberry got up from the table and poured his breakfast into the trash can and wiped his hands on a piece of paper towel. “I’m running late. Can you let yourself out?” he said.
“I’ve tried to put you in the loop.”
“Is that what y’all call snake oil?” Hackberry said.
Through her windshield Pam Tibbs saw the oversize pickup on a winding stretch of isolated two-lane road that was spiderwebbed with heat cracks and broken so badly in places that it was hardly passable. The road went nowhere and had little utilitarian value. The sedimentary formations protruding in layers from the hillsides had been spray-painted by high school kids, and the areas under the mesas where the kids parked their cars at night were often littered with beer cans and used condoms. The road dipped over a rise and ended at the entrance to a cattle ranch that had gone out of business with the importation of Argentine beef in the 1960s.
Through the cruiser’s windshield, Pam saw the pickup weave off the road, skidding gravel down a wash. Then the driver overcorrected and continued haphazardly down the centerline, ignoring the possibility of another vehicle coming around a bend, as though he were studying a map or texting on a cell phone or steering with his knees. Pam switched on her light bar and closed the distance between her cruiser and the truck. Through the pickup’s back window, she saw the driver’s eyes lock on hers in the rearview mirror.
When the driver pulled to the shoulder, Pam parked behind him and got out on the asphalt, slipping her baton into the ring on her belt. The truck was brand-new, its hand-buffed waxed yellow finish as smooth and glowing as warm butter, a single star-spangled patriotic sticker glued on the bumper. The driver opened his door and started to get out.
“Stay in your vehicle, sir,” Pam said.
The driver drew his leg back inside the truck and closed the door, snugging it tight. Pam could see his face in the outside mirror, his eyes studying her. She heard his glove compartment drop open.
Pam unsnapped the strap on her. 357 Magnum. “Put your hands on the steering wheel, sir. Do not touch anything in your glove box.” She moved forward but at an angle, away from the driver’s window, her palm and thumb cupped over the grips of her holstered revolver. “Did you hear me? You put your hands where I can see them.”
“I was getting my registration,” the driver said.
“Do not turn away from me. Keep your hands on the wheel.”
His hair was gold and cut short, his sideburns long, his eyes a liquid green. She moved closer to the cab. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.
“Taking a drive. Looking through my binoculars.”
“Turn off your engine and step out of your vehicle.”
“That’s what I was trying to do when you told me to get back inside. Which is it?”
“You need to do what I say, sir.”
“It’s Reverend, if you want to be formal.”
“You will step out of the vehicle and do it now, sir,” she said.
“I have a pistol on the seat. I use it for rabbits. I’m no threat to you.”
She pulled her revolver from its holster and aimed it with both hands at his face. “Put your right hand behind your head, open the door, and get down on the ground.”
“Have you heard of the Cowboy Chapel? Don’t point that at me.” He looked straight into the muzzle of her gun. “I respect the law. You’re not going to threaten me with a firearm. My name is Reverend Cody Daniels. Ask anybody.”
She jerked the door open with one hand and stepped back. “Down on the ground.”
“I will not do that. I will not tolerate your abuse, either. I did nothing to deserve this.”
She was holding her. 357 with both hands again, the checkered grips biting into her palms. “This is your last chance to avoid a very bad experience, sir.”
“Do not call me ‘sir.’ You’re deliberately being disrespectful in order to provoke me. I know your kind, missy.”
She was gripping the pistol so tightly, she could feel the barrel tremble. Her temples were pounding, her scalp tight, her eyes stinging with perspiration. She stared at the driver in the silence. The skin around his mouth was bloodless, his gaze iniquitous, dissecting her face, dropping to her throat and her breasts rising and falling inside her shirt. When she didn’t move or speak, his eyes seemed to sweep the entirety of her person, noting the loops of sweat under her arms, a lock of her hair stuck on her damp forehead, the width of her hips, the way her stomach strained against her gun belt and the button on her jeans, the fact that her upper arms were as thick as a man’s. She saw a smile wrinkle at the corner of his mouth. “You seem a mite unsettled, missy,” he said. “Maybe you should be in another line of work.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she replied. She pulled her can of Mace from her belt and sprayed it in his face and jerked him out of the cab, then sprayed him again. He flailed his arms blindly, his eyes streaming tears, then he slapped at her hands as a child might, as though he were being violated. She threw him against the side of the truck, kicking his feet apart, stiff-arming him in the back of the neck, the tensions of his body coursing like an electric current through her palm.
When he continued to struggle, she slipped her baton from the ring on her belt and whipped it behind his calves. He dropped straight to his knees, as though his tendons had been cut, his mouth open wide, a cry breaking from his throat.
She pushed him facedown on the ground and cuffed his wrists behind him. His left cheek was printed with gravel, his mouth quivering with shock. He wrenched up his head so he could see her. “No hot coal will redeem your tongue, woman. You’re a curse on the race. A pox on you and all your kind,” he said.
