Blue Lonesome

by Bill Pronzini

  “Mule-stubborn, same as your brother.”

  “Keep it up,” she said, “and he really will kick your ass purple. You’re no match for him. Or Skinny-Shanks Spears.”

  “I know it.”

  “So why keep banging your head against a wall? You one of those freaks who likes pain?”

  “What I like is having something to believe in. All I’m after is the truth.”

  “The truth,” she said. “Shit, the truth.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you and me could’ve been good friends, Jim. Real good friends. But you just blew it. A guy with crazy ideas is a guy with a busted head, likely. And a guy with a busted head is no damn good to me.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. I can use a friend right now.”

  Lynette shrugged, started to slide out of the booth. Messenger put a hand on her arm.

  “At least stay long enough to have another beer with me.”

  “One’s my limit.” She shrugged off his hand. “Besides, I got to pick up my kid at the baby-sitter’s. So long, Jim, I wish I could say it’s been nice,” and she slid free of the booth.

  “We’ll see each other again.”

  “From a distance, if you know what’s good for you.”

  She tugged her uniform skirt down and walked to the door. One of the men at the bar said something; the others laughed raucously. Lynette turned long enough to say, “Up yours, boys,” in a voice full of bitter dignity. Then she was gone.

  THE TELEPHONE RANG five minutes after he let himself into his room at the High Desert Lodge. He was in the bathroom, splashing cold water on his heat-sticky face. He caught up a towel before he went out to answer.

  A man’s scratchy voice asked, “This Jim Messenger?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “My name’s Mackey, Herb Mackey. You heard of me?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I run a place down south of town a few miles. Mackey’s Rocks and Minerals.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Mackey?”

  “More like what I can do for you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Asking around about the Roebuck murders, ain’t you? Don’t think that Anna Roebuck did it.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I got something you ought to see. Something you ought to hear about, too.”

  Messenger sat on the edge of the bed. “Evidence that might prove Anna Roebuck innocent?”

  “Better come out and see for yourself.”

  “If you have evidence of some kind, you should take it to the sheriff—”

  “No. You or nobody.”

  “Give me an idea of what it is you have.”

  “You got to see it. Unless you ain’t interested.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” Mackey said. “I ain’t said a word to anybody else about this and I ain’t going to.”

  “But if you think—”

  “I don’t think, mister. Thinking ain’t what I do best. You coming out here or not?”

  “I’m coming. Where are you, exactly?”

  “About six miles south, off the main highway. Side road to the west. You’ll see a sign at the junction—Mackey’s Rocks and Minerals. Make it about forty-five minutes. I got to go and get what I want you to see.”

  “Forty-five minutes,” Messenger said. “I’ll be there. And thanks, Mr. Mackey. Thanks very much.”

  HUNGER DROVE HIM out of the room almost immediately. He hadn’t had any appetite until Mackey’s call; now he was ravenous. Sudden excitement had that effect on him, made him hungry for food along with whatever else he was anticipating. There wasn’t enough time for a sit-down meal, but he’d noticed a Jack-in-the-Box in a little shopping center near the high school; he could eat a burger and fries in the car.

  But he didn’t get to the Jack-in-the-Box and he didn’t get to feed his hunger. He was opening the Subaru’s door when a familiar dust-caked station wagon turned off the highway into the motel lot, rattled to a stop nearby. The pint-sized stick figure of Reverend Hoxie popped into view.

  “Going out, Mr. Messenger? I’m glad I caught you. Can you spare me a few minutes?”

  Messenger said reluctantly, “Well, if it’s no more than fifteen.”

  “Fifteen will be plenty.” Hoxie’s smile this evening seemed small and pasted on. Behind it was the kind of nervousness a person feels when he’s on a difficult or unpleasant errand. “In your room, where it’s more private?”

  Messenger nodded and led the way inside. Hoxie glanced around, then sat gingerly on the edge of the room’s only chair. The bed or an upright lean against the dresser were Messenger’s only options; he chose the latter.

  “What can I do for you, Reverend?”

  “Well …” Hoxie cleared his throat. “I understand you had words with my daughter this afternoon.”

  “We spoke briefly, yes.”

  “Long enough for you to ask her embarrassing questions.”

  “Embarrassing?”

  “You intimated that she … that there was something between her and Dave Roebuck.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “She was upset and I made her tell me why. We both thought those vile rumors had been laid to rest, and now you’ve dredged them up again.”

  “So you did know about the alleged relationship.”

  “Oh, yes,” Hoxie said with bitterness, “from the first. More than one member of my congregation saw fit to repeat the rumors to me. There’s not a shred of truth to them.” Absently he smoothed the crosshatched gray hair on his skull. “Maria is a good girl in the purest sense of that term. As close to an angel as any God ever made. She would never allow a man like Dave Roebuck to soil her.”

  “Then how did the rumors get started?”

  “I have no idea. How does any false rumor find voice? This is a small town, Mr. Messenger, a closed community. People see and hear all sorts of things that are open to misinterpretation. And not everyone gets along with his neighbors. Not even a man of the cloth is exempt from pettiness.”

  “Enemies, Reverend?”

  “I’ve made a few in my life, God knows.”

  “Who in Beulah, for instance?”

  “I won’t provide fodder for any more rumors.”

  “I don’t start rumors,” Messenger said. “Or repeat them. I asked your daughter some questions, nothing more. I didn’t accuse her of anything.”

  “What right do you have to ask questions? You’re not a member of this community. You have no purpose here except as a catalyst, an opener of old wounds.”

  “That’s your opinion. I won’t argue it with you.”

  “How long do you intend to stay?”

  “Until I’m ready to leave.”

  Hoxie stood. “Then I’ll ask—no, I’ll demand—that you not bother Maria again. Not speak to her at all.”

  “All right. But with a proviso.”

  “And that is?”

  “The rumors about her and Dave Roebuck really are false—”

  “They are.”

  “—and she had nothing to do with the murders.”

  Hoxie flushed; his prominent Adam’s apple slid up and down the column of his neck like a ball in a pneumatic tube. “Are you suggesting she was involved somehow?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything.”

  “God help you if you are,” Hoxie said. “God help you if you do anything, anything at all, to harm or shame my daughter.”

  It was not an idle threat. The little man’s face was implacable; he meant every word.

  14

  THE SUBARU’S ODOMETER had clicked off 5.9 miles from the southern outskirts of town when he saw the sign:

  MACKY’S

  ROCKS AND MINERALS

  There was a third line of black lettering, but a strip of burlap sacking had been nailed over it. Some other attraction or service that Mackey no l
onger offered tourists and passing motorists.

  Messenger turned on to another of the unpaved tracks that passed for roads out here. Ahead, a hundred yards or so from the highway, a cluster of weathered wooden structures squatted along the edge of a shallow cut-bank gully. A line of stunted, withered tamarisk trees grew in the gully, their branches turned a shiny liquid amber by the westering sun. The same hue softened the scrub-spotted plain beyond, except where rocky hillocks and yucca trees threw long, distorted shadows; the shadows were a deep indigo-black. The sky in that direction was just beginning to take on sunset colors above the distant mountains: burnt orange and cayenne red.

  As he neared the buildings they separated into three: a mobile home with drawn muslin curtains, a twenty-foot-square box with what appeared to be a series of wooden trays built across the front, and an odd high-fenced enclosure, open to the sky, that had a low, roofed shed tacked on to the near wall. The box probably housed Mackey’s collection of rocks and minerals. Messenger had no idea what the fenced enclosure was.

  He parked near the trailer. Utter silence greeted him as he left the car; the freaky wind of earlier in the day had died completely. He went up and knocked on the door. There was no response, no sound from within. He called out, “Mr. Mackey?” and knocked again. Same results.

  The dirty white nose of a pickup poked out from behind the trailer. He walked around to it. The body and bed were even dirtier, and half of its radio antenna had been snapped off. The cab was empty, but engine heat radiated through the hood. Mackey must be around here somewhere.

  He circled the trailer to the wooden box. The trays across its front were all empty. On the door was a pair of homemade signs, not as artfully lettered as the big one at the highway junction. One was a price list of the rocks and minerals Mackey had for sale: coarse gold, fool’s gold, garnets, agates, mica quartz. The other sign said CLOSED.

  Messenger moved over to the fenced enclosure. It looked to be larger than the box, about thirty feet square; the walls rose ten feet high all the way around, the boards tightly fitted, without openings of any kind. But the shed was open, at least; as he neared it he saw that its door stood partially ajar. That must be where Herb Mackey was.

  The shed door also bore a sign … no, half a sign. The upper section had been torn away. The remaining half read:

  ADULTS — $2.00

  CHILDREN — $1.00

  KIDS UNDER 6 — FREE

  He peered through the doorway into a dust-hung gloom. “Mr. Mackey?” The sound of his voice echoed emptily back to him. He pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside.

  On his left was a short, bare counter; the shed was otherwise empty. Two doors had been cut into the rear wall, one behind the counter and the other ten feet away on the right. The door in back of the counter, like the outer door, stood ajar. The other was shut tight. Frowning, Messenger circled the counter. That door’s hinges made a creaking sound as he nudged it wide. Beyond he saw that there were actually two fences: a short, tunnel-like passageway separated them. Yet another half-open door let him glimpse what lay past the inner wall—some kind of open space strewn with rocks. Fading sunlight stained the rocks, gave them an odd glowing quality as if they were radioactive.

  “Mr. Mackey?”

  And this time there was a response, words that seemed to come from a distance above his head. “In here. Come on through.”

  Three strides brought him to the inside door. This one opened inward; he dragged it back past his body and then stopped short, staring. What the hell was this? He was standing on the edge of a shallow pit, the rocky ground sloping down from the base of the inner fence on all four sides to a huge heap of rocks at the bottom. The fall-aways were steep, but the angle wasn’t sharp enough to prevent anyone from walking up or down in an upright position. Above, the inner fence ended a few feet below the outer one, and between the two a narrow catwalk with a waist-high railing ran all the way around the enclosure. He noticed one other thing in that first sweeping glance—a woven quarter-inch wire mesh had been fastened to the board along the bottom of the inner fence, from ground level to a height of about two feet.

  Movement distracted him then, on the catwalk directly over his head. Mackey. He leaned out, craning to look upward.

  Sliding sound behind him in the passage. Instinctively he drew back, started to turn his head the other way. A man-shape appeared at the far corner of his eye—and then something struck him across the right temple, hard and vicious, like a hammer blow. Pain erupted; his vision slid out of focus. He felt his legs giving way, tried to grab the door or the wall. A second blow jolted him, this one a thrusting force just above his kidneys, and in the next instant he was off his feet and falling.

  Impact with the ground, belly down and hard on the left side, drove all the air out of his lungs. He skidded downward, skin scraping from palms and forearms. A rock smacked his shoulder, changed and slowed the direction of his slide. When he finally came to rest amid a small avalanche of pebbles and dirt he lay there panting, disoriented, his thoughts mired in confusion. The only one of his senses that seemed to work was the aural. Clear and sharp he heard a door slam shut, steps running on wood. A voice shouted something, but the words ran together unintelligibly. More sounds followed, less distinct, jumbled. After that there was nothing but his own rasping breath.

  He lay there for a little time and then he was up on his knees, with no sense of having risen. He opened his eyes, but his vision was still cockeyed; everything was shadows and wavery images, like objects viewed through murky water. He blinked and blinked, and the shadows merged and formed a wall of darkness. Panic gripped him. But the blindness lasted for only a few seconds. There was a kind of flash behind his eyes and suddenly he could see again, although now rocks and fence and catwalk seemed to have vague, fuzzy halos.

  He lowered his gaze to the loose earth in which he knelt, trying to focus on small objects—pebbles, a piece of wood. They began to blur, and the panic nipped at him again until he realized that his eyes were tearing. He cleared the wetness away with the back of his hand. The pebbles and the wood still had their fuzzy halos, but the aureoles were dimmer now, fading.

  All at once he was aware of pain. Pulsing on the right side of his head, above the ear. Stinging along his arms and palms. He held the hands out in front of him and focused on them. Abrasions, blood. He reached up to probe the pulpy spot over his ear, recoiled from his own touch, then looked at his fingers. More blood.

  Hit and shoved from behind. Two men, one on the gallery and the other hiding outside. Trap.

  Why?

  Dry hissing sound.

  His ears picked it up, faintly at first, then more clearly. It was alien to him. He peered around for the source, but he couldn’t seem to locate it. Close … why couldn’t he find it?

  Something moved—a feathery slithering.

  Something rattled.

  As soon as he heard the rattle he knew what it was. The panic surged; he struggled to drag one foot under him, but then he didn’t have enough strength to lift himself. Sluggish, movements and thoughts both, like reaction to terror in a nightmare. He knelt there struggling for control of his motor responses, panting again, and all that would move was his head, his still-fuzzy gaze swiveling left, right, up, down. Where was it? Where—?

  There. Close. On one of the rocks no more than three feet away.

  Huge.

  Jesus!

  Thick body coiled, tail vibrating, head poised forward, blood-red tongue flicking the air. And the eyes …

  He fought to get up, couldn’t get up. Paralyzed! The snake’s eyes were black evil, mesmerizing. The mottled hexagonal pattern on its body rippled and gleamed—death shining in the dying sun. He couldn’t look at the eyes any longer; he watched the scaly body moving sinuously, changing the shape of its coil, the neck twisting into a long S-wave, the head lifting higher, the lower sections forming a wide circle. Coiling to strike, it was going to strike!

  Adrenaline r
ush. And a jarring sensation in his head; his vision came into sudden sharp focus. A second later, the paralysis left him. It was as if his body were like the snake’s: tight coiled and then releasing all at once. He lunged to his feet, staggering, flailing for balance.

  His foot slipped and slid in the loose earth. Instead of twisting back away from the snake, he stumbled closer to it.

  And it, too, released.

  The lancelike drive of the head was a blur; he had no time even to brace himself. It was like being struck in the ankle with a thrown rock. The leg went out from under him; he sat down hard, staring in terror at the diamondback’s fangs embedded in the high top of his hiking boot, its thick coils writhing as it struggled to free itself.

  A noise came out of his throat. He kicked wildly at the ugly flattened head, the wide-open mouth, again and again until the rattler pulled free or he drove it free. It flopped and slithered backward, already starting to squirm into a new series of tight loops. On all fours he scuttled frantically away from it along the slope, his feet kicking up a shower of rocks and dirt, images in his mind of the snake coming after him, chasing him with bared fangs dripping venom. He didn’t stop moving or expecting a second strike until he realized he was all the way over on the far side of the pit. And only then did he look back to see how close the snake was.

  It wasn’t close. It was still down where he’d last seen it, coiled, hissing, rattling again.

  Relief flooded him, but it lasted no more than two or three heartbeats. His ankle! He twisted over onto his left hip, dragged the right foot up so he could peer at the boot. Fang holes in the leather, a thick whitish dribble of venom. Penetrated deep enough to break the skin? He felt no pain … there’d be pain if he was bitten, wouldn’t there? The impulse was strong to tear off the boot and sock under it, examine the skin with eyes and fingers to make sure. Another fear and an even stronger desire kept him from doing it.