I looked at my watch. “I’d better get back to the hotel. I have to make some calls.”
“Will you have lunch with us?” she said.
“Let me see what Clete is doing.”
“Clete Purcel is here?” she said.
“He gets around,” I said.
“Well, I’m happy he was able to come out,” she said.
I didn’t know what else to say. I felt disappointed in Bailey and in myself. “Thanks for having me here, Des. I’ll see you later.”
I walked away, feeling foolish and inadequate, as though I were starting to lose part of myself.
“Don’t you want a lift?” Wexler said.
I had forgotten I’d ridden to the set with him and Alafair. “I’ll hitch a ride,” I said.
Three miles down the road, a man driving a chicken truck with glassless windows picked me up, and we drove across the state line into Arizona and a dust storm that turned the sun to grit.
• • •
AT THE HOTEL I called Helen and apologized for leaving her shorthanded.
“Forget it,” she said. “I’m going to have a talk with Bailey when she gets back.”
“Why’d you let her come out here?”
“I figured what’s the harm? What are the things you regret most in your life, bwana?”
“Constantly taking my own inventory.”
“You know what I’m talking about. We regret the things we didn’t do, not the things we did. All the romances we didn’t have, the music we didn’t dance to, the children we didn’t parent. So I let her have her fling with Lotusland. Then I got mad at myself about it. By the way, I got a phone call from a federal agent regarding Hugo Tillinger.”
Of all the subjects she could bring up, Tillinger was the one I least wanted to hear about.
“This agent grew up with him,” she said. “He believes Tillinger may have killed a biker in the Aryan Brotherhood about ten years ago. The biker raped and broke the neck of an old woman in Corsicana. She belonged to the same church Tillinger did. Somebody tore the biker apart with a mattock.”
I felt my stomach constrict. “What’s the evidence?”
“None. The crime remains unsolved. Some fellow church members asked Tillinger about it. His answer was ‘I, the Lord, love justice.’ It’s from Isaiah.”
My head was coming off my shoulders.
“Are you there?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ll let Clete tell you.”
This time she went silent. Then she said, “Dave, did Clete see Tillinger again?”
“He saw him save a little girl’s life at a filling station in Lafayette. Clete followed him to a motel north of Four Corners but cut him loose.”
“Son of a bitch,” she said. “How long have you known this?”