'What for?' he asked.
'To search for the gun that killed Skyler. You might also run a powder-residue test on Jeff Deitrich and any of his friends who happen to be hanging around,' I said.
'Right now the number one suspect is Jessie Stump,' Hugo said.
'The entry wound was at the top of his chest. The exit wound was in his rib cage. What does that suggest to you, Hugo?' I said.
'That a bullet goes in one place and out the other,' he replied, and pared a fingernail with a penknife.
A young uniformed deputy, new to the department, walked down the hillside through the pine trees, holding a. 30-06 shell on the tip of a pencil.
'Found it on the crest up there. You can even see the shooter's boot and knee prints in the pine needles. It looks like he fired from the right side of the trunk, which means he's probably right-handed…' He paused. 'I do something wrong?' he said, looking at Hugo's face.
That afternoon I drove down the long valley and across the cattleguard in front of the Deitrich home and walked up the huge slabs of black stone that formed the front steps. When no one answered the chimes I walked around the side of the house to the terrace, which was shaded by a black-and-white-striped canopy. Peggy Jean and Jeff and Earl sat at a glass-topped table, drinking daiquiris, while shish kebab smoked on a barbecue pit and young people I didn't know swam in the pool.
Fletcher Grinnel, the ex-mercenary, stepped out of the French doors with a drink tray, paused momentarily when he saw me, smiling either deferentially or to himself, then set down the tray and painted the shish kebab on the grill with a small brush.
'Why don't you invite yourself over?' Earl said.
'Hugo Roberts wouldn't get a warrant on your home. But I thought I should let you know what you've done,' I said.
'Sit down with us, Billy Bob. It's Sunday. Can't we be friends for today?' Peggy Jean said.
'Skyler Doolittle is dead. If I had to bet on the shooter, I'd put my money on either Fletcher over there, grimacing into the smoke, or Jeff and his friends wondering if they should go to a swimming party this afternoon or, say, gang-rape a Mexican girl,' I said.
Jeff wore a Hawaiian shirt open on his chest. He slanted his head sideways and pushed the curls off his forehead with the tips of his fingers, studying my words with the idle concentration he might show a street beggar. Then he shook his head slowly as though he were bemused by a metaphysical absurdity and let his eyes wander out onto the swimming pool.
'Fletcher, go inside and call the sheriff's office and find out what this is about,' Earl said.
'Should I show Mr. Holland to his car?' Fletcher asked.
'That's a possibility,' Earl said.
'You know what you've let either this hired moron or your psychopath of a son do?' I said to Earl. 'Skyler Doolittle had gotten Jessie Stump off your case. They were headed for Matagorda Bay, out of your life. But somebody murdered this harmless, gentle man with a. 30-06 rifle while Jessie was shaving a few feet away. It looked like Jessie tried to stop the bleeding with his shirt. Skyler's blood was smeared over everything in the area, which means Jessie probably tried to drag him out of the line of fire. That's the man who's probably up in your tree line now, Earl.'
Fletcher Grinnel set down the barbecue brush on a white plate and wiped his fingers with a paper towel and approached me, his lips pursed whimsically.
'No,' Peggy Jean said, and rose from her chair. She took me by the arm. 'You walk with me, Billy Bob. This kind of thing is not going to happen at our house.'
She held my arm tightly, almost in a romantic fashion. Her breast touched my arm and her hip brushed against mine as we walked toward the front of the house. When we were around the corner of the building I felt the tension go out of her grip and I stepped away from her.
'You tried to warn Skyler. When this plays out in a courtroom, that'll count for something,' I said.
'Whatever do you mean?'
'You left him a note on a pine branch outside the cave he and Stump were hidden in.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'He saw you picking blackberries on the creek. Why do you deny a good deed?'
'You listen, Billy Bob. My husband has gambled away or mismanaged or leveraged everything we own. After all the years I've spent on this marriage I'm not about to accept a life of genteel poverty in Deaf Smith. I'm bringing civil suit against Wilbur Pickett for the damage he's done to us. Don't you dare lie to me about the theft of those bonds, either. That man stole them and he's going to pay for it.'
'Skyler Doolittle was murdered this morning, probably by a member of your household, and you're talking about a civil suit?'
The blood climbed into her face.
'Maybe I'm a victim here, too. Did that ever occur to you?' she said.
'Yes, it did…'
'Then why do you treat me the way you do?' She stepped close to me and hit me in the chest with the flat of her fist, then again, desperately, her jawbone flexing. 'We could have made it work. Why weren't you willing to try?'
'Because you don't love what we are, Peggy Jean. You're in love with what we were.'
Her face crinkled high up on one cheek, like a flower held too close to heat. Then she turned and went into the house, her elbows cupped tightly in her palms, her back shaking.
Monday evening Ronnie Cruise turned off the road into my driveway and parked by the barn, out of view from the front. He was driving Cholo Ramirez's '49 Mercury, and an odor of burning rubber and oil rose from the tires and engine. Ronnie got out of the car and took off his shades and looked back down the drive at the road.
'What are you doing with Cholo's car?' I said.
'I just got it out of the pound. Both our names were on the pink slip,' he said.
'Somebody after you, Ronnie?'
'I cruised Val's. Some guys in a roll-bar rig followed me out. I got to sit down. I didn't get no sleep last night.'
'What can I do for you?' I asked.
'I'm gonna save you a lot of time. My uncle, the guy who owns the auto shop where I work? He's mobbed-up. Him and Cholo and some other guys, guys out of Galveston, were working the stick-up scam on Deitrich's business friends. There's this old skeet club between Conroe and Houston, except now it's got water beds and chippies in it. Deitrich would steer his friends to the card game, then Cholo and the others would take it down. I got some guilt over this.'
'You said you weren't involved with it.'
'You not understanding me. Yesterday I saw this dude Johnny Krause with my uncle. I asked my uncle, 'Hey, what are you doing with this guy?' He goes, 'Johnny was one of the take-down artists on the last job at the skeet club.' I go, 'That's the guy who killed Cholo.'
'My uncle goes, 'Cholo wasn't in on that last one, so he didn't know who Johnny was when he run into him at the boxing gym. Too bad it shakes out like that sometimes.'
'Too bad? That's my own uncle talking like Cholo was a sack of shit. I told my uncle to go fuck himself. I hope the cops nail his chop shop and jam a grease gun up his ass.'
'You want to come inside?'
'Yeah, I'd like that,' he said.
In the kitchen he sat at the table and drank an RC Cola and ate a ham and lettuce sandwich with his face close to the plate. He wore a pair of wash-faded Levi's without a belt and a purple T-shirt razored off below the nipples. His eyes kept studying mine, his lips seeming to form words that he rubbed away with the back of a finger before he completed them.
'What else did you come here to tell me, Ronnie?' I asked.
'Some Purple Hearts got it that Jeff Deitrich wants to do Essie, make her pull a train. The word is he's gonna use some bikers, meth-heads that don't got boundaries. Then he's gonna pop your boy.'
'Say that again.'
