In the Moon of Red Ponies (Billy Bob Holland 4)

While Johnny sat on the porch, McComb tore the closet apart, throwing all Johnny’s hangered shirts and trousers out on the floor. Then he reached down and picked up a pair of tennis shoes and placed them in an evidence bag. He was resting on one knee now, his stomach hanging over his belt, his broad shoulders about to split his suit coat. He squinted up at Amber’s silhouette framed against the window, the tautness of her shirt against her breasts. His eyes drifted to the bed, where the sheets and covers had slid off the mattress onto the floor.

“It’s true Indians do it dog-style?” he said.

“Ask your wife,” she replied.

McComb threw the bagged shoes to his partner and laughed. “Keep your eye on American Horse,” he said.

McComb ripped a sheet loose from the bed, then dumped the contents of Johnny’s chest of drawers on the mattress, poking through socks and underwear. “I’m not married,” he said.

“I’m shocked,” she replied.

“If he’s dirty, you’re probably going down with him. Your old man will be hard put to bail you out of this one.”

“Why is it I think you’re full of shit?” she asked.

He surveyed the room and pulled his collar off his neck, as though it chafed him. “I’d like to help you with any troubles that might come out of this,” he said.

He was positioned between her and the door, massive, the bulk of his shoulders like small sacks of cement. She could hear him breathing through his nose, smell his hair oil and the body heat and odor of testosterone in his clothes. He took a business card from his shirt pocket and lifted her hand and slipped the card between her fingers. She could feel the sharp edges of his calluses against her palm. “You get jammed up, just call me,” he said. “I grew up in a midwestern farm town, just like your old man did. We’re the same kind of people.”

He tried to keep his eyes respectful, his expression neutral. But she saw his tongue touch his bottom lip, the slackness in his jaw, the flush in his throat, the way his stare dipped momentarily.

She crumpled the card, letting it drop into a trash basket as she brushed past him into the front of the house. Behind her, she heard him make a sound like he had bitten a word in half.

“What did you say?” she asked, turning toward him.

“Maybe one day you’ll learn who the good guys are.”

“I can’t wait. In the meantime, kiss my ass,” she said.

Outside, the air was clear and bright, the mountains a deep blue-green against the sky. Johnny American Horse was still sitting on the edge of his porch, his legs crossed, his coned straw hat slanted forward. “You really think I snuffed that guy at the hospital?” he said to McComb.

“I think you’ll do anything you can goddamn get away with,” McComb said. He picked up the evidence bag containing Johnny’s tennis shoes from the hood of his cruiser. He shook the bag and grinned. “Size ten and a half. I think we might have a match.”

Johnny stared into space, his hands pressed between his thighs, his face in shadow. He pushed himself off the porch and approached McComb, his hands pushed flatly into his back pockets. “I want a property receipt for the shit you took out of my house,” he said.

“It’s on your table,” McComb said.

“I didn’t sign it.”

“You don’t need to, asshole.”

“I think I do,” Johnny said, his face averted.

McComb stepped closer to him, covering Johnny with his shadow. The men were now so close together they looked almost romantically intimate. “You don’t deserve to live in this country,” McComb said.

“Could be. You gonna write out another receipt?” Johnny scratched an insect bite on his forearm.

Maybe his boot brushed against McComb’s shoe, or his coned hat touched McComb’s face. Or maybe McComb, staring at Amber over Johnny’s shoulder, simply could not deal any longer with his own rage and sense of sexual rejection. He swung his fist into the middle of Johnny’s face, then pulled his blackjack from his back pocket and whipped it down on Johnny’s head, neck, and shoulders, slashing with all his strength, as though attacking a slab of meat on a butcher block.

THAT AFTERNOON I went into Fay Harback’s office without knocking. “I just left St. Pat’s. Go down there and look at what your trained goon did to Johnny American Horse,” I said.

“I know all about it,” she replied.

“No, you don’t. McComb used a blackjack on him, for God’s sake. Without provocation.”

“That’s what you say. Both detectives tell a different story.”

“McComb came on to Amber Finley. She told him to take a walk, so he tore Johnny up. That’s what happened.”