The why in the case he’s working on is clearly money. Three kids from the university are dead because someone wanted bucks badly enough to sell them rattlesnake seeds and jimsonweed without once giving a good goddamn about the consequences. Kids will buy anything, especially East Coast kids who haven’t been warned their whole life long about what grows in the desert. One seed of rattlesnake weed makes you euphoric, it’s like LSD growing free. The problem is, two can cause your death. Unless, of course, the first has already done that job nicely, which was the case with one of the kids, a history major from Philadelphia who had just turned nineteen. Gary was called in early by his friend Jack Carillo in homicide, and he saw the history major on the floor of his dorm room. The boy had had awful convulsions before he died; the whole left side of his face was black and blue, and Gary suggested that no one would consider it tampering with the evidence if they put some makeup on the kid before his parents arrived.
Gary has read the file on James Hawkins, who’s been selling drugs in Tucson for twenty years. Gary is thirty-two, and he vaguely remembers Hawkins, an older guy the girls used to whisper about. After dropping out of high school, Hawkins got into trouble in various states, Oklahoma for a while, then Tennessee, before returning to his hometown and getting sent to the lockup on charges of criminal assault, which, along with drugs, seems to be his forte. When he couldn’t bullshit his way out of a bad situation, Hawkins was known to go for his opponent’s eyes, using the heavy silver ring he wore to gouge and dig. He acted as though no one could stop him, but it’s pretty much the end of Mr. Hawkins’s criminal career now. The history major’s roommate positively identified him—from his snakeskin boots to the silver ring decorated with a cactus and a rattlesnake and the cowboy he may have imagined himself to be—and they’re not the only ones to have picked out his photo. Seven other students, who were lucky enough not to take the bogus drugs they bought from him, have identified this loser as well—and that should be that, except no one can find Hawkins. They can’t find his live-in girlfriend, either, from all accounts a good-looking woman who seems to have been a hostess at every half-decent restaurant in town. They’ve checked the bars Hawkins frequented and questioned all three of his alleged friends, and no one’s seen him since late June, when the university let out.
Gary has been getting into Hawkins’s life, trying to figure him. He’s been frequenting the Pink Pony, which was Hawkins’s favorite place to get drunk, and sitting on the front patio of the last house Hawkins rented, which is why Gary happened to be there when the letter arrived. He was sitting in a metal chair, his long legs stretched out so he could prop his feet up on the patio’s white metal railing, when the mailman walked right over and dropped the letter on his lap and demanded the postage due, since the stamp had fallen off somewhere along the way.
The letter was crumpled and torn in one corner, and if the flap hadn’t already been open, Gary would have just taken it over to the office. But an opened letter is hard to resist, even for someone like Gary, who’s resisted a lot in his life. His friends know enough not to offer him a beer, just as they know not to ask him about the girl he was married to, briefly, right after high school. They’re willing to do this because his friendship is worth it. They know that Gary will never deceive them or disappoint them—that’s the way he’s built; that’s the way his grandfather raised him. But this letter was something else; it tempted him, and he gave in to it, and, if he’s going to be honest, he still doesn’t regret it.
Summer in Tucson is seriously hot, and it was a hundred and seven degrees as Gary sat out on the patio of the house Hawkins used to rent and read that letter addressed to Gillian Owens. The creosote plant that grew beside the patio was all but popping with the heat, yet Gary just sat there and read the letter Sally had written to her sister, and when he was done he read it again. As the afternoon heat finally began to ease up, Gary took off his hat and dropped his boots down from the metal railing. He’s a man who’s willing to take chances, but he has the courage to walk away from impossible odds. He knows when to back off and when to keep trying, but he’d never felt like this before. Sitting out on that patio in the purple dusk, he was long past considering the odds.
Until Sonny died, Gary had always shared a house with his grandfather, except for his brief marriage and the first eight years with his parents, which he doesn’t remember out of sheer willpower. But he remembers everything about his grandfather. He knew what time Sonny would get out of bed in the morning, and when he’d go to sleep, and what he’d eat for breakfast, which was invariably shredded wheat on weekdays, and on Sundays pancakes, spread with molasses and jam. Gary has been close to people and has a whole town full of friends, but he’d never once felt he’d known anyone the way he felt he knew the woman who wrote this letter. It was as if someone had ripped off the top of his head and hooked a piece of his soul. He was so involved with the words she’d written that anyone passing by could have pushed him off his chair with one finger. A turkey vulture could have landed on the back rung of the chair he was sitting in, screamed right in his ear, and Gary wouldn’t have heard a sound.
He went home then and packed his bag. He called to tell his buddy Arno at the AG’s office that he had found a great lead and was going after Hawkins’s girlfriend, but of course that wasn’t the whole truth. Hawkins’s girlfriend wasn’t the one he was thinking about when he asked his closest neighbor’s twelve-year-old boy to hike by each morning and set out some food and water for the dogs, then took his horses over to the Mitchells’ ranch, where they’d be turned out with a bunch of Arabians much prettier than themselves, and maybe learn a lesson or two.
Gary was at the airport that evening. He caught the 7:17 to Chicago, and he spent the night with his long legs folded up on a bench at O’Hare, where he had to change planes. He read Sally’s letter twice more in midair, and then again while he ate eggs and sausage for lunch in a diner in Elmhurst, Queens. Even when he folds it back into its envelope and places it deep inside the pocket of his jacket, the letter keeps coming back to him. Whole sentences Sally has written form inside his head, and for some reason he’s filled with the strangest sense of acceptance, not for anything he’s done but for what he might be about to do.
Gary picked up directions and a cold can of Coke at a gas station on the Turnpike. In spite of his wrong turn near the Y field, he manages to find the correct address. Sally Owens is in the kitchen when he’s parking his rented car. She’s stirring a pot of tomato sauce on the back burner when Gary circles the Honda in the driveway, gets a good look at the Oldsmobile parked in front, and matches its Arizona license plate number to the one in his files. She’s pouring hot water and noodles into a colander when he knocks at the door.
“Hold on,” Sally calls in her matter-of-fact, no-nonsense way, and the sound of her voice knocks Gary for a loop. He could be in trouble here, that much is certain. He could be walking into something he cannot control.
When Sally swings the door open, Gary looks into her eyes and sees himself upside down. He finds himself in a pool of gray light, drowning, going down for the third time, and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. His grandfather told him once that witches caught you in this way—they knew how much most men love themselves and how deeply they’ll let themselves be drawn in, just for a glimpse of their own image. If you ever come face to face with a woman like this, his grandfather told him, turn and run, and don’t judge yourself a coward. If she comes after you, if she has a weapon or screams your name like bloody murder, quickly grab her by the throat and shake her. But of course, Gary has no intention of doing anything like that. He intends to go on drowning for a very long time.
Sally’s hair has slipped out of its rubber band. She’s wearing a pair of Kylie’s shorts and a black sleeveless T-shirt of Antonia’s and she smells like tomato sauce and onions. She’s out of sorts and impatient, as she is every summer when she has to pack for the trip to the aunts’. She’s beautiful, all right, at least in Ga
ry Hallet’s estimation; she’s exactly the way she is written down in her letter, only better and right here in front of him. Gary’s got a lump in his throat just looking at her. He’s already thinking about the things they could do if the two of them were alone in a room. He could forget the reason he’s come here in the first place if he’s not careful. He could make a very stupid mistake.
“Can I help you?” This man who’s arrived at her door wearing cowboy boots coated with dust is lean and tall, like a scarecrow come to life. She has to tilt her head to get a glimpse of his face. Once she sees how he’s looking at her, she takes two steps back. “What do you want?” Sally says.
“I’m from the attorney general’s office. Out in Arizona. I just flew in. I had to transfer in Chicago.” Gary knows this all sounds awfully stupid, but most things he’d say at this moment probably would.
Gary hasn’t had an easy life, and it shows in his face. There are deep lines he’s too young to have; there’s a good deal of loneliness, in full view, for anyone to see. He’s not the kind of man who hides things, and he’s not hiding his interest in Sally right now. In fact, Sally can’t believe the way he’s staring at her. Would somebody really have the nerve to stand in her doorway and look at her like this?
“I think you must be at the wrong address,” she tells him. She’s sounding flustered, even to herself. It’s how dark his eyes are, that’s the problem. It’s the way he can make someone feel she’s being seen from the inside out.
“Your letter arrived yesterday,” Gary says, as if he were the one she’d actually written to rather than her sister, who, as far as Gary can tell from the advice Sally gave her, doesn’t have a brain in her head, or—if she does—it’s not one she pays much attention to.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sally says. “I never wrote to you. I don’t even know who you are.”
“Gary Hallet,” he introduces himself. He reaches into his pocket for her letter, although he hates to give it up. If they examined this letter in Forensics they’d find his fingerprints all over it; he’s folded and unfolded it more times than he can count.
“I mailed that to my sister ages ago.” Sally looks at the letter, then at him. She has the funny feeling that she may be in for more than she can handle. “You opened it.”
“It was opened already. It must have gotten lost at the post office.”
While Sally is deciding whether or not to judge him a liar, Gary can feel his heart flopping around like a fish inside his chest. He’s heard about this happening to other men. They’re going about their business one minute, and suddenly there’s no hope for them. They fall in love so hard they never again get up off their knees.
Gary shakes his head, but that doesn’t clear up the matter. All it does is make him see double. Momentarily there are two Sallys before him, and each one makes him wish he weren’t here in an official capacity. He forces himself to think about the kid at the university. He thinks about the bruises up and down the kid’s face and the way his head must have hit against the metal bed frame and the wooden floor as he thrashed about in convulsions. If there’s one thing in this world Gary knows for a fact, it’s that men like Jimmy Hawkins never pick fair fights.
“Would you know where your sister might be?”
“My sister?” Sally narrows her eyes; maybe this is just one more heart Gillian broke, arriving to plead for mercy. She wouldn’t have taken this fellow for such a fool. She wouldn’t have figured him to be her sister’s type. “You’re looking for Gillian?”
“Like I said, I’m doing some work for the attorney general’s office. It’s an investigation that concerns one of your sister’s friends.”
Sally feels something wrong in her fingers and toes that is a whole lot like the edge of panic. “Where did you say you were from?”
“Well, originally, Bisbee,” Gary says, “but I’ve been in Tucson for nearly twenty-five years.”
It is panic that Sally is feeling, that much is certain, and it’s creeping along her spine, spreading into her veins, moving toward her vital organs.
“I pretty much grew up in Tucson,” Gary is saying. “I guess you could say I’m chauvinistic, because I’m convinced it’s the greatest place on earth.”
“What’s your investigation about?” Sally interrupts before Gary can say more about his beloved Arizona.
“Well, there’s a suspect we’re looking for.” Gary hates to do this. The joy he gets out of a murder investigation isn’t happening for him this time around. “I’m sorry to inform you of this, but his car is parked out there in your driveway.”
The blood drains out of Sally’s head all at once, leaving her faint. She leans against the doorway and tries to breathe. She’s seeing spots before her eyes, and every spot is red, hot as a cinder. That goddamn Jimmy just doesn’t let go. He keeps coming back and coming back, trying to ruin someone’s life.
Gary Hallet stoops down toward Sally. “Are you okay?” he asks, although he knows from her letter that Sally’s the kind of woman who wouldn’t tell you right away if something was wrong. It took her nearly eighteen years before she gave her sister a piece of her mind, after all.
“I’m going to sit down,” Sally says, casually, as if she weren’t about to collapse.
Gary follows her into the kitchen, and watches as she drinks a glass of cool tap water. He’s so tall he has to duck in order to pass through the kitchen doorway, and when he sits down he has to stretch his legs straight out so his knees will fit under the table. His grandfather always said he had the makings of a worrywart, and this pronouncement has turned out to be true.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he tells Sally.
“You didn’t upset me.” Sally fans herself with her hand, and still she’s flushed. Thank goodness the girls are out of the house; she has that to be grateful for at least. If they get dragged into this, she’ll never forgive Gillian, and she’ll never forgive herself. How did they ever think they could get away with it? What idiots, what morons, what self-destructive fools. “You didn’t upset me a bit.”
It takes everything she has to keep her nerve and look at Gary. He looks right back at her, so she quickly lowers her gaze to the floor. You have to be extremely careful when you look into eyes like his. Sally drinks more water; she goes on fanning herself. In a predicament such as this, it’s best to appear normal. Sally knows that from her childhood. Don’t give anything away. Don’t let them know what you feel deep inside.
“Coffee?” Sally says. “I’ve got some that’s hot.”
“Sure,” Gary says. “Great.” He has to talk to the sister, and he knows it, but he doesn’t have to rush. Maybe the sister just took off with the car, but it’s just as likely she knows where Hawkins is, and Gary can wait to deal with that.
“You’re looking for one of Gillian’s friends?” Sally says. “Is that what you said?”
She has such a sweet voice; it’s the New England vowels she’s never quite lost, it’s the way she purses her lips after each word, as though tasting the very last syllable.
“James Hawkins.” Gary nods.
“Ah,” Sally says thoughtfully, because if she says any more she’ll scream, she’ll curse Jimmy and her sister and everyone who ever lived in or traveled through the state of Arizona.
She serves the coffee, then sits down and starts to think about how the hell she’s going to get them out of this. She’s already done the laundry for their trip to Massachusetts; she’s gassed up the car and had the oil checked. She has to get her girls out of here; she has to figure out a really good story. Something about how they bought the Oldsmobile at auction, or how they found it abandoned in a rest area, or maybe it was just left sitting in the driveway in the middle of the night.
Sally looks up, ready to start lying, and that’s when she sees that this man at her table is crying. Gary is too tall to be anything but awkward in most situations, but he’s got a graceful way of crying. He just lets it happen.
�
�What’s wrong?” Sally says. “What’s the matter?”
Gary shakes his head; it always takes a while before he can talk. His grandfather used to say that holding tears back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you’re left with a stub of a neck and nothing more. Gary has cried more than most men ever will. He’s done it at rodeos and in courts of law; he’s stood by the side of the road and wept at the sight of a hawk someone has shot out of the sky, before going to get a shovel from the back of his truck so he can bury the carcass. Crying in a woman’s kitchen doesn’t embarrass him; he’s seen his grandfather’s eyes fill with tears nearly every time he looked at a beautiful horse or a woman with dark hair.
Gary wipes at his eyes with one of his big hands. “It’s the coffee,” he explains.
“Is it that bad?” Sally takes a sip. It’s just her same old regular coffee that hasn’t killed anyone yet.
“Oh, no,” Gary says. “The coffee’s great.” His eyes are as dark as a crow’s feathers. He has the ability to catch someone by the way he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking. “It’s coffee in general that does this to me. I get reminded of my grandfather, who died two years ago. He sure was addicted to coffee. He had three cups before he opened his eyes in the morning.”
Something is truly wrong with Sally. She can feel a tightness inside her throat and her belly and her chest. This could well be what a heart attack feels like; for all she knows she could end up unconscious on the floor in seconds flat, her blood boiling, her brain fried.
Practical Magic Page 19
