Bad Signs

by R.J. Ellory

  Cassidy went out to Deming regardless. He trusted that news of what was happening around El Paso had not traveled the hundred or so miles northwest to the gas station and Clark Regan.

  Digger Danziger, however, woke with a hellacious thirst, the same kind of thirst that had prompted his desire for a bottle of Shoeshine’s root beer all those many years earlier. Clay Luckman was not there to do his work for him, and in thinking of that incident—an incident that seemed part of someone else’s history—he realized how little he had thought of his brother during recent events. They were not the same, had never been the same, and in that moment Digger was proud of the differences. He thought of the love he had once possessed for Clay, but there seemed to be nothing there. Where he had once respected his brother, there seemed to be a vacuum. Such a consideration did not trouble him. In that moment, had he been asked whom he wished to be reunited with—Clay or Earl—it would have been Earl. No question. Every time it would have been Earl.

  Digger went downstairs to look in the refrigerator. There was nothing of use. Half a bottle of soured milk. A carton of orange juice. He tasted it, found it too bitter. He threw the carton in the sink, tipped the milk in after it, and then searched out some clothes and money.

  Out of the corner of his eyes he noticed the sheet-covered bodies in the room beyond the kitchen. He walked on through, lifted a corner of it, and looked at Candace. Her eyes were in that mess somewhere, but he couldn’t see them. Her head was over to one side like she was bored. Bored to death, he thought, and smiled to himself.

  Digger drove into Van Horn in Morton Randall’s pickup. It was early, a little before nine, and the place was dead. He drove around some, found a mercantile, went inside and bought milk, some cream, some cheese and ham and bread and eggs. Whether there were such things in Randall’s house didn’t matter. There was a woman behind the counter and he wanted to get her talking. She had on a pin badge. Sue-Anne it read.

  “Hey, Sue-Anne,” Digger ventured. The woman looked at him. She was about thirty-five or forty. She was slim but she was hefty up top. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had a pleasant face.

  “Hey there back,” she said. She smiled. It wasn’t genuine. She smiled like it was eight o’clock in the morning and she didn’t want to be there.

  “Kinda get the idea you don’t wanna be here,” he said.

  “I’d say you was pretty much right there, son,” she replied.

  Digger’s nostrils cleared. Son? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  He saw the face of that man in the diner. The one with the hat. He had a chair for his fucking hat!

  Digger closed his eyes for just a second.

  “You okay there, son?” the woman asked.

  She said it again. Son? What the hell was it with this bullshit?

  Digger gritted his teeth. He could keep it together. She was talking down to him? Treating him like a kid? Just like that bastard back in the diner. But he could keep it together. Earl would have kept it together. Earl would have just smiled and taken it all in his stride. Earl could handle trouble, but he wasn’t one to go making trouble for himself.

  Digger thought about the .45, the fact that it was back in Randall’s pickup.

  He took a deep breath. He could feel the rage somewhere in his chest. And he could hear Earl’s voice in his head.

  Earl was no kid, and neither was he. This woman—this bitch—needed to understand who she was dealing with.

  Sue-Anne rang up his provisions. “That’ll be two dollars ten,” she said.

  “I think you should give me this stuff for free,” Digger said.

  She looked at him. Her expression had that same bored-to-death thing as Candace.

  “I think you should get your wallet out and pay me,” she said.

  “I think you should shut the fuck up,” Digger replied.

  “What?” she said. “What the hell kind of thing is that to say to me? Jesus Christ, what on earth gives you the right to come in here …”

  Digger leaned across the counter and slapped her across the face as hard as he could.

  Sue-Anne staggered back a step, and before Digger knew what was happening she had a gun in her hand. It had come from beneath the counter. There was nothing, and then there was a gun.

  “Whoa,” he said, genuinely surprised.

  “Get the hell outta my store,” she said. Her eyes were on fire, her teeth gritted. Digger could see the muscles jumping along her jaw line.

  The gun was steady, but it was a .32, maybe even a .25. Even if she fired it, and even if it hit him, well, a popgun like that wasn’t gonna give him much more than a scratch, was it?

  “And if I don’t?” he asked. He felt playful, mischievous. Sue-Anne was no more going to pull that trigger than Digger was going to let her live.

  “Then … well, son, I’m gonna shoot you right where you stand.”

  “Son?” he said. “What the fuck is this ‘son’ bullshit?”

  “What I say,” Sue-Anne replied. She was edging along behind the counter. She was planning on coming out into the store and walking him to the door at gunpoint. Like that was going to happen!

  “Just exactly what I say,” Sue-Anne went on. “You ain’t nothin’ more ’an a teenager. You come on in here badmouthing me, and then slap me for Christ Almighty’s sake … Jesus Lord Almighty, who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m your worst fucking nightmare,” Digger said.

  Now he was angry. Now he was riled. Now she had spoken to him disrespectfully. Said he was nothing more than a teenager. Well, a teenager he might be, but he could still take that .32 off of her and stick it where the sun didn’t shine before he pulled the goddamned trigger.

  “So get the hell outta my store, boy,” she said. “Get the hell outta here and don’t come back …”

  She didn’t finish the statement. Digger had reached out and grabbed her arm. He twisted that arm with all his strength, but Sue-Anne was no Laurette Tannahill, no Dee Parselle. Sue-Anne was used to hauling fifty-pound bags of seed and feed, gallon drums of molasses and whatnot from the back of her truck and into the store. Once Digger got ahold of her arm she just wrenched back the other way and relinquished his grasp.

  Digger, surprised at first, then mad, advanced at her again.

  She fired.

  The sound was deafening in the enclosed space.

  Digger thought he felt the air move as the bullet whizzed by his face and hit the wall behind him.

  “Jesus—”

  She raised the gun again, all ready to shoot him down. Just like Earl. Just like they did to Earl, the bastards!

  Digger let fly with a wild swing and caught her on the shoulder.

  Sue-Anne staggered back and lost her balance.

  Digger just ran.

  He was out of the store and into the pickup before Sue-Anne had a chance to gain her feet once more.

  “Fucking bitch!” he shouted as he hurtled away. He saw her in the rearview, standing there in front of the store with the gun in her hand.

  “Fucking bitch, fucking bitch … God Almighty, what the hell!” he shouted, and slammed his hands on the steering wheel.

  Back on the frontage Sue-Anne watched him hightail it out of there. She was terrified, hyperventilating, more scared than she’d ever been.

  Elliott Danziger was there, and then he was gone, like an errant, ill-omened wind.

  He drove away feeling a sense of tension and hatred right through his mind and his body. He had been challenged, and—once again—he had been found wanting.

  What would Earl have said?

  Earl would have said nothing. Earl would have turned right around and headed on back to that store, and he would have taken that bitch and beat her head in, no question.

  Digger looked back one more time in the rearview. He could still see her, standing right there in front of the store with that gun in her hand.

  Now he needed to hurt someone more than ever.

  A
nd hurt them bad.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Clark Regan looked sick. He was maybe sixty or sixty-five. Not an old man, but he really did look sick. He had the sort of face that belonged to this part of the country, these kinds of people. People who’d spent their lives looking at nothing but distance and dust storms. Kind of people who could predict weather from the shape of shadows around the moon. And were always right.

  It was just after ten. The drive from Tucson had consumed the better part of three hours, and Cassidy hadn’t dallied or delayed. He’d wanted to get to Deming as early as possible. He’d wanted time to go on from there to wherever else he needed to in order to pursue this thing. That, and minimize the possibility of news from El Paso reaching Clark Regan. Cassidy needn’t have worried. The last thing in the world that concerned Clark Regan was the possibility that he might be hunted down and killed by a homicidal teenager.

  There was no hesitation in the man’s voice or his body language when Cassidy showed him the picture of the girl.

  “Yep,” he said. “That’s the one.”

  “And she told you about the dead people in the car?”

  “Couple of dead fellers she said, back a ways. Asked me to phone the sheriff’s department.” Regan nodded his head. “So you’re in with the other two fellers that came here? The federal people?”

  “I am, yes. We’re working the same case. They’re federal, I’m police from Tucson.”

  “So you’re a good ways from home, then?”

  “I am.”

  “Well, now you know the same as me, no more, no less.”

  “The boy that was with her …”

  “Yeah, he was here too.”

  “And you didn’t see him so well?”

  “Nope. He was back there some.” Regan nodded toward a rack of potato chips. “I reckoned he was gonna steal something while she distracted my attention. I thought it was just a story. Come in here and raise an alarm about something or other, get me all flustered, get me making telephone calls to the sheriff for no reason, and meanwhile the accomplice robs me blind. But it wasn’t that way. He didn’t steal nothin’, and what she said was the truth. There were indeed a coupla dead fellers under a car back a while on the highway. Seems from what I heard that they was a coupla hummersexuals doing stuff they shouldn’a been doin’ in a car on the highway … shouldn’a been doin’ anyplace, I reckon.”

  “Okay, I really appreciate that, Mr. Regan. And there is no doubt in your mind, no doubt whatsoever, that this girl here is the one that reported that to you and asked you to make the call?”

  “On my life,” he said. “Not that there’s a great deal of it left, but yes, I’m sure, on my life, that that was she and she come in here and told me what she did.”

  “Okay, okay …” Cassidy paused. He could feel his heart in his chest. That same rush of something. Not because he had something that no one else had, but because he had something. He felt like he should buy something.

  “Gimme a carton of Luckies,” he told Regan.

  “You don’t smoke,” Regan replied.

  Cassidy frowned.

  “You ain’t got the smoker’s teeth, nor the fingers nor the skin. I should know. Been smokin’ them damn things all my life, and now they got me.” He touched his midriff. “Say there’s cancer in my gut, in my kidneys, ever-where, you know? I’ll be here a few months more, and then it’s all done and dusted.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear that,” Cassidy said.

  “ ’Preciated, son, but it don’t matter. We ain’t kin and we ain’t never gonna be, so don’t lose your head over it. You wanna buy something, well, I ain’t gonna stop you, but buy something you need. We don’t make more ’an a dime on them smokes anyhows.”

  Cassidy loaded up the counter with cookies and potato chips. He got candy bars and cans of soup and a wrench and a pair of leather gloves.

  Regan totaled them up and took his money. He packed everything in a brown paper bag and pushed the bag across the counter.

  “You enjoy them candies, now, you hear?” he said.

  Cassidy smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Regan. I really appreciate your help.”

  “Well, you’re welcome, son, and I hope you do just fine, and I hope you catch whoever it is that you folks seem so busy lookin’ for.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cassidy managed the door with one hand, and he was back in the car before he really understood the import of what had happened.

  The girl—this Bailey—had been alive on Wednesday, just two days before. She had walked into Clark Regan’s gas station and reported the car, and beneath that car had been Harvey Warren’s gun. Had she put it there? Had she taken it from the gas station in Marana after the death of Frank Jacobs—her father?—and had she then put it beneath the overturned car? If so, why? And was she Jacobs’s daughter? If not, then who was she? And who was the boy with her?

  He drove away with more questions than those with which he’d arrived. But the most important question had been answered, at least with a degree of certainty. Whoever had appeared with the girl at the gas station, and whoever had followed the Eckharts from the diner were different people. And now he was looking for three, not one. Of this Cassidy felt sure.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Southwest a hundred and fifty miles or so, no more than seventeen or eighteen miles from where Digger Danziger had recently driven away from Sue-Anne McCarthy’s mercantile in Morton Randall’s pickup, Clay Luckman and Bailey Redman sat on the floor of the barn where they had slept. The fireworks of the night before could have been a dream. The day was bright and fresh and cool, and though they knew the lake was somewhere down the hill they could not see it.

  “Eldorado … I’d say it’s only about two hundred and fifty miles now,” she said. “If we could get a good ride, someone that would take us to where the highway divides, then we’d be within striking distance.”

  “And when we get there?” Clay asked her. He turned sideways and looked at her profile. The more he looked at her the prettier she got. Was it that way with all girls, or just with Bailey Redman?

  “I don’t know, Clay, and it’s no use askin’ me. You know we ain’t got no reason to go there more than any other place. We’re just going, that’s all.”

  “ ’Cause of your daddy.”

  She hesitated, and then she nodded sagely. “ ’Cause of my daddy maybe, but more because of your dumb magazine advertisement.”

  “What was he like?” Clay asked. “I only ask because I never really had one.”

  “I’m the wrong person to ask,” Bailey replied.

  “Look … if you don’t want to talk about it—”

  “I do want to talk about it,” Bailey interjected. “It’s just that … well, it ain’t the easiest thing in the world to talk about so you gotta let me do it in my own time.”

  Clay bit his lip. He stayed silent. He wanted her to know that she could take all the time she wanted. “He sold shoes, right?” Clay prompted.

  “Yeah, shoes. Nothing wrong with selling shoes. You gotta do something for a living and he sold shoes.”

  “Nothing wrong with selling shoes at all.”

  Bailey looked away toward where the lake had been the night before, toward the memory of reflected fireworks. “He sold a lot of shoes, I think. He had a house full of shoes. His whole house smelled of leather.” She paused. “It was a good smell. I used to go visit, and I would wait until he opened the door, and then when he did I would just stand there for a second and I could smell the leather. That’s a smell that will always remind me of him.”

  “Leather is a good smell.”

  “And he was good too,” Bailey said. “He didn’t smoke much, and he hardly ever took a drink, at least from what I saw. He wasn’t a religious person. He didn’t go to church or nothin’ like that, and I never saw him reading the Bible or anything, but he was a good man. The sort of man who says he’s gonna do something, and then he does it. Sort of man who trea
ts people kindly no matter who they are. I mean, he used to go on down and sell shoes to the black folks, and he would charge them less than the white folks ’cause he knew they had less money. And he wouldn’t tell ’em he was givin’ them an extra discount because he didn’t want to hurt their pride. He treated everyone the same as everyone else, didn’t matter who you were—man, woman, white, black, Chinese, or whatever you were; as far as my dad was concerned everyone was the same.”

  “My dad got shot in a store … just like yours did.”

  Bailey turned and looked at Clay. A frown creased her brow.

  “ ’Cept my dad was tryin’ to rob it, and there was a cop in there and he shot my dad. Earlier that day my dad killed my mom. He hit her in the head with a baseball bat and broke her neck.”