by R.J. Ellory
Bystanders across the road were shouting and pointing, indicating the direction Riggs had taken.
Both Wright and King could hear the engine, but they did not see the car.
Caught between a rock and a hard place, Lucas Wright told Donny King to stay with the injured folks, and then he ran down to the street, got into his car, and took off after Riggs.
King went to speak to the girl, but she was talking crazy, made no sense at all, and she wouldn’t let him see to her friend. King was worried about that one, the way his face was all smashed up, the blood around his eyes, the fact that he wasn’t moving at all. He tried to remember what he should do from first-aid classes, but nothing came. He hoped to God that the kid didn’t die before the ambulance got there. The girl was getting kind of wild, too, shouting at the people gathered across the street, telling them that Riggs had done this, that Riggs had to be stopped, that Riggs was a fucking crazy motherfucking son of a bitch.
Donny King, a churchgoing man, told her that that kind of language wasn’t necessary. The girl told him to go fuck himself. He wanted to handcuff her, simply because she was annoying the hell out of him, but then the ambulance arrived and people who seemed to know a great deal about what to do were all over the scene.
Donny King stepped out of the fray and let them go on about their business. The coroner arrived, too, another car from the Ozona Sheriff’s Department, and Donny felt like a spare part.
The whole scene was surreal. Lights, crime-scene tape, gurneys, people shouting, sawhorse barriers erected and ropes strung between them to cordon the Lang place off from the street.
The ambulance peeled away, presumably to the County Hospital. For triage and surgery and suchlike, it was the closest and largest facility, and that boy sure as hell looked like he needed something more than a doctor’s clinic.
Lang’s body was taken away, and then it all went quiet, and Donny King sat in his car and watched as the crowd of onlookers dispersed. He wondered where the hell Lucas was, if he’d caught up with Sheriff Riggs, and what the hell was going to happen next.
FORTY-SEVEN
It rained, and rained good. A couple of pickups got jammed in muddy ruts, and Carson Riggs organized other pickups to drag them out. Seemed like the world and all its relatives descended upon the farm that Wednesday afternoon, grim-faced, sodden through, tracking footprints across the veranda, down the hall, right into the front parlor where Grace Riggs held court like the bereaved matriarch that she was. William Riggs was dead. Ralph Wyatt was dead, too, but with Rebecca up at Ector, her doctors unwilling to release her for her own father’s funeral, the Wyatt occasion had been organized by Ralph’s sister. A handful of cousins, news of an aged uncle who ultimately never showed, and now the Wyatt place was as still and silent as Ralph’s grave. Word was that the sister would take over the place. Time would tell, as it always did.
The Riggs gathering was different. William had been settled in Calvary these past three decades. He knew everyone, and those he did not yet knew of him, if not through Carson, then through the country-singing son. He was fifty-three years of age, no age at all, in fact, and here he was laid out in his Sunday best in a handmade coffin from a funeral place in Ozona.
Grace Riggs had told Carson to find Evan. Carson gave his word and was good to it. Evan was found just three days after the shooting, drunker than a second-rate actor in a third-rate play, all set to fall into the orchestra pit and break his darned fool neck had someone not been there to catch him.
And so it was that the Riggs boys were having to bury their differences along with their father, at least for the duration of the funeral itself and the gathering that followed. They stood side by side at the end of the hallway, shaking folks’ hands, accepting condolences, directing the mourners through to the parlor where women from Grace’s church group had laid out potato salad and honey-baked ham, King Ranch chicken casserole, a bucket of spaghetti for the kids, assorted sandwiches and sheet cake and an endless supply of lemonade and hot coffee. The menfolk huddled awkward and silent, discreetly passed around a bottle with which to fortify the aforementioned coffee; the women gathered around Grace as if their presence alone would somehow serve to offset the imbalance occasioned by William’s absence. Absence did not and never had made any heart grow fonder. Absence was absence, nothing more nor less.
Carson appeared stoic, Evan merely stunned. Nevertheless, he was sober for the first time in months. The shock of his father’s death had been complemented by the shock of all that had transpired between Carson and Rebecca. It was his mother who had told him about the pregnancy, about Carson’s decision to send the girl up to Ector County, and yet no one had possessed the courage to tell him the real truth: that Rebecca was carrying his child, that he was—in fact—a father.
Carson said nothing. It would have been an admission of utter failure. To stand in the shadow of a brother was difficult; to stand in the shadow of a younger brother was nigh on impossible. To know that you played second fiddle when it came to the affections of your parents was one thing; to know that you played the same part when it came to the life you’d subsequently created for yourself as an adult was another level of failure altogether.
Carson simply said that the pregnancy, as was sometimes the case with women, had unsettled her, not only physically but emotionally, and her needs were being best served by the professionals up at Ector. Not only that, but she was now contending with the loss of her own father in such dreadful circumstances. Psychiatric opinion, according to Carson, was that her attendance at the funeral could only make things worse, and protest though she might have done, what they were doing was for her own good. Could Evan visit with her? No, not yet. Could Evan perhaps send her a note to let her know that he was here in Calvary, that he was thinking of her, that he wished her a speedy recovery? No, it was best not to do that right now. Let her concentrate on getting herself well.
Perhaps Evan’s deep-ingrained guilt regarding what had happened between himself and Rebecca the night of the farewell party made him take a step back. Unaware that it was his child she was carrying, Evan acceded to Carson’s dictates and decisions. He had no right to challenge Carson’s authority when it came to his own wife.
With all that was needed for their own father’s funeral preparations, Carson insisted that Evan spend time with his mother, that he be appropriately attentive to his own family. Perhaps Evan was a little shamed. He had been found drunk; he had been hauled back to Calvary, had barely realized what was going on until he’d been there a good twenty-four hours. As was always the case in such situations, those left behind believed that had they been present, perhaps they could have done something to avert whatever inevitability had struck. Evan could no more have prevented the strange series of events that resulted in the deaths of both William Riggs and Ralph Wyatt than he could have left a bottle of rye unopened. Life, in truth, was not there to be challenged. It was there to be lived, and it possessed more than enough force and unpredictability to remind you who was in charge if you ever believed yourself capable of besting it.
Life and circumstance had bested William Riggs, and the brothers were reunited to bury him. Grace told them not to fight, and so they did not. Not until later. Not until the last of the mourners and well-wishers had traipsed through the red Texas mud back to their respective pickups and cars and buggies. It was late afternoon, the sun aiming for its usual spot beyond the horizon, and Evan stood looking out from the west-facing veranda at a view he barely remembered. Carson came up behind him, carried a bottle and two glasses, told his brother that they should share a drink and a few words.
Evan took his first glass of the day, drank it down, had it refilled before Carson had taken his first sip.
“Bad business all round,” Carson said.
Evan merely nodded.
“Changes coming, and fast.”
Evan drank, listened, didn’t have much to say.
“You gonna stay for a while, Evan?”
“Long as Ma needs me,” he said, holding out the glass for a third go at the bourbon. The shakes were settling, his stomach untying from whatever Gordian arrangement had tangled his innards.
“I’m here,” Carson said, which was as good as telling Evan his presence was no longer required.
“You are, indeed,” Evan replied, which was Evan’s way of telling his brother that the whole of Calvary now seemed to be in the thrall of Sheriff Riggs.
“I’ll speak to Warren Garfield in the morning,” Carson said.
“About what?”
“What do you think?” Carson said, a note of disbelief in his tone. “The will. The land, the farm … what we are going to do. Everything will be in Ma’s name, but she’ll want us to sort it all out. She won’t want to be dealin’ with lawyers and whatever.”
“You been talkin’ to them oil people still,” Evan said. “Ma told me. She ain’t happy, you know? Not what Pa wanted, and not what she wants.”
Carson smiled imperiously. “Sometimes you gotta make a decision for someone, Evan. Sometimes you gotta do what’s right for someone even when they don’t know what’s right themselves.”
“Like what you done to your wife?”
Evan felt it rather than saw it, as if the very spirit of his elder brother took an angry and defiant step forward. Fists were raised, figuratively speaking, and Evan knew that he should back off or face the music here and now.
“You’re not to speak of my wife, Evan,” Carson said, his voice a snarling hound on a leash.
“Your wife, my friend,” Evan said.
“Hell of a friend you are. Deserted her, deserted Ma and Pa, went off to Austin to drink yourself stupid.”
“Least I had stupid to get to, Carson. You been livin’ there for years.”
“Sometimes you are such an asshole, Evan.”
“Beats being an asshole all the time, Carson.”
“We gonna do this now?” Carson asked.
“When did we ever not do it?” Evan asked. “You always been down on me. You always had a sharp word and a bitter comment in your mouth when it came to me. You ain’t much of a brother by any standards. Doesn’t look like you’re much of a husband, either. Ain’t right that you got her up at Ector. She should be here, being looked after by kin.”
“Don’t see you have any right to tell anyone how to behave, little brother. You’re so courageous, you go rescue her, why don’tcha?”
Carson had him, and Evan knew it.
“Your job, Carson, not mine. Guess the only thing for you to do is find some extra ways to go fuck yourself.”
“They teach you to talk like that in them bars and saloons you frequent?”
“Nope,” Evan replied. “I learned that all by myself. Special kind of language I studied up on just for you.”
Carson set the bottle down on the veranda rail. “You stay here and drink the whole thing,” he said. “Maybe you’ll find some sense way down near the bottom.”
Evan smiled. “Oh, I doubt it, big brother. Been looking there a long time, and all I found is more reasons to go on drinking.”
Carson took his glass with him. Took his anger and his resentment, too. Evan could feel it behind him in the house, like the sound of someone breathing, like the certainty that something was right behind him and it did not wish him well.
Several people saw Carson Riggs leave the offices of Warren Garfield the following morning.
It was a little after ten, and Carson—according to reports—“looked like he’d swallowed thunder and had the indigestion to match.”
Voices had been raised. That much was known. Specifics and details were unknown, but common sense said it had to involve the last will and testament of William Ford Riggs, deceased. Something had happened, something about which Carson Riggs had been both angry and confused, and when he returned to the farm, he took Evan aside and asked him point-blank if he was planning on staying back and running the farm.
“You know I ain’t gonna do that,” Evan said, “but that don’t mean we can’t get a farm manager in, pay him a good wage, keep the place going for Ma. I’ve spoken to her, and she feels that would be best. I think that’s what Pa would have wanted—”
“Hell, Evan. Seems to me you’re the last person in the world to have any kind of opinion about what Pa would have wanted.”
“What did Garfield say?”
“What did he say? What do you think he said? Place is fifty-fifty. You and me, little brother. We gotta make some decisions.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“The hurry?” Carson frowned. There was something in his face that Evan had seen only a couple of times before. Carson was angling for a fight, and a real one at that. “You gonna stand in my road, Evan? Is that what you’re gonna do?”
“Don’t see there’s a road for me to stand in,” Evan replied. “Where the hell you think you’re headin’ anyhow?”
“Future lasts only so long as it’s there,” Carson said.
“The hell does that even mean?”
“Means you’re gonna come to see Garfield and we’re gonna sign some papers and we’re gonna start talking to them oil people and make enough money to take care of Ma and ourselves for the rest of our lives. They want drilling rights here, and I am set on givin’ ’em just exactly what they want.”
“Is that so?”
“Sure is, and I don’t wanna hear a goddamned word of resistance about this, Evan. Matter of days you can head off back to Austin or wherever the hell you wanna go, and you will go richer than you could ever imagine.”
“And if I don’t got no interest in bein’ richer than I could ever imagine?”
Carson frowned. He tilted his head to one side as if trying to see his younger brother from some new angle. Then he started laughing. “What in God’s name are you talkin’ about, boy? You don’t wanna fill your pockets with gold and head out of here like a king?”
“I have no such interest, Carson. Right now I am interested in two things and two things only. Firstly, I wanna see Ma settled down. She’s grievin’, Carson, and she’s gonna be grievin’ for a good while yet. Let her deal with this, okay? Let her deal with this before we start throwin’ even more confusion and craziness into her life. There’s time, man. This business can wait a couple of months. Hell, if there’s oil here, it ain’t goin’ nowhere. Been here a million years; will still be here five years from now.”
“Five years? What—”
Evan raised his hand. “Listen for a minute, Carson. You got yourself fixed up as sheriff, and you are so busy bein’ big boss with the hot sauce that you ain’t hearin’ anythin’ but your own goddamned voice. Well, let me have a chance here. Like I said, there’s only two things I am interested in. Helpin’ Ma deal with everything she’s gotta deal with, and that means we change nothing, do nothing, let everything settle for a while. Second thing, and this is something I plan on doing right now, and that’s go see your wife up in Ector, give her my condolences about her pa, see she’s all right, have a talk with them doctor people and find out what they plan on doin’, when she’ll be out, an’ all that. She’s pregnant, Carson. You’re gonna be a daddy. You need to be dealin’ with that.”
Carson said nothing. His eyes were cruel slits out of which he glared at his younger brother. “You are not to go and see Rebecca,” Carson said. His voice was emphatic.
“Sorry?”
“I told you. You heard me. You are not to go and see my wife.”
Evan laughed. “Carson, you may be the sheriff of this here pokehole, but when it comes to telling me what I can and can’t do, you can go to hell.”
Carson stepped forward, his fists clenched.
Evan frowned. “What is this? You gonna arrest me? You gonna fight me? What the hell is going on with you?”
“Don’t go up there,” Carson said. “I’m tellin’ you now, and I ain’t sayin’ it again, Evan. Don’t go up there.”
“Well, fuck you, Carson. More times you tell m
e, the more determined I am to be contrary. I’m gonna go up there right now and visit with her, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it.”
Another step forward, Carson and Evan now no more than three feet from each other, the tension palpable, the sense of threat and bottled violence both potent and real.
“I told you twice, Evan. There ain’t gonna be a third time.”
“What the fuck—”
Carson grabbed Evan’s wrist. Evan wrenched his hand free and pushed his brother away. Carson lost his footing, stumbled backward, his right thigh colliding with the small table. Carson grabbed at it instinctively, but the table fell sideways with a crash. He ended up on his ass, looking up at his younger brother. It was the final ignominy.
“You have become such an asshole, Carson,” Evan said, and before Carson had a chance to say a word, Evan had stormed back into the house and slammed the door behind him.
Carson heard the engine of their father’s pickup gunning into life, selfsame pickup he’d been driving when he met on the road with Ralph Wyatt. Carson got to his feet and ran after his brother, caught a final glimpse of the truck as it passed the end of the driveway and reached the road. Evan was headed for Ector County Hospital and Rebecca Riggs, oblivious to the fact that just as his dalliance with her after the party had resulted in a life, so his reunion with her now would result in, not one, but two unnecessary deaths.
If God was at work, then he was a fiercely retributive God. Seemed that this was the way of things, and there was nothing that could be done to avert it.
FORTY-EIGHT
By the time Henry Quinn came to in the emergency room at the County Hospital, it was all over Calvary that Sheriff Carson Riggs had gone crazy, was holed up in Roy Sperling’s house, that Sheriff’s Department people from both Sonora and Ozona were on the way, if not already there.
Clarence Ames showed up, took one look at Henry’s busted-up face, at the shocked and wan expression with which Evie returned his wordless gaze, and he took off again.
