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

A shaft of sunlight shone through the airspace between the restroom wall and roof and made Darrel’s eyes burn and twitch. The trough against the wall stank of piss and through the open door of a stall he could see a toilet that was up to the rim with brown water. Outside, somebody had set off a string of firecrackers and they popped like lesions splitting on the surface of Darrel’s brain. Darrel looked directly into Wyatt’s eyes and believed he could actually hear Wyatt laughing at him, as though Wyatt had stolen his soul and wiped his feet on it.

Darrel caught his breath. “I’m taking you in as a material witness. Then I’m going to get a warrant on your place and tear it apart. I’m also going to get your bank accounts frozen. That’s just for openers. When I’m finished with you, you’ll wish you were still a dirty thought in your father’s mind.”

Dixon sucked a canine tooth, then turned back toward the urinal. “I don’t think you got too many arrows in your quiver, Detective. I’m taking back my recommendation to President Bush. You just don’t measure up, boy,” he said.

Darrel cupped him by the upper arm and spun him around. He could not quite believe the level of power he felt in Wyatt’s arm and he wondered for a moment if he had made an irreversible mistake. But Wyatt didn’t resist. Darrel snapped a handcuff on Wyatt’s wrist, then locked the other manacle on an iron pipe that was anchored in the cinder-block wall and the cement floor. Wyatt was now helpless, balanced precariously on his crutches.

“I told you I got to urinate,” Wyatt said.

“Maybe you can start a new career doing adult diaper endorsements,” Darrel said.

He returned to the grove of cottonwood trees and started his car, his heart beating. What had he just done? Made a bust that wouldn’t stick, allowed Dixon to treat him with contempt, and jammed himself up with the D.A.’s office. But it was too late to change course now. He had to brass it out or become a worse object of ridicule than he already was.

He drove his car to the restroom area, blowing his horn to discourage Dixon’s revivalist friends who had started to reenter the building. He hit the redial button on his cell phone and heard Fay’s voice on the other end. “I’m bringing him in. I’ll do the paperwork in the morning,” he said.

“You’re not doing this on my authorization,” she said.

“This guy is a menace. Are you going to back my play or not?”

“Come in tomorrow morning and we’ll talk. In the meantime, I don’t want—”

He snapped the cell phone shut, parked the car, and opened the back door so he could move Dixon quickly into the car and lock him to the D-ring inset in the floor before Dixon’s friends could cause more trouble. He entered the restroom, then stared dumbfounded at Wyatt relieving himself in the trough, one manacle hanging from his wrist. The iron pipe to which he had been hooked up lay on the floor like a broken pugil stick, each end festooned with a chunk of concrete or cement.

Wyatt shook himself off and put his equipment back in his pants. Blood was leaking from the gauze and plaster on his thigh. “Best whiz I ever had,” he said, his face beaming with visceral satisfaction.

THAT NIGHT, Darrel McComb ended up in a skin joint and got drunker than he had ever been in his life. The early dawn found him on Greta Lundstrum’s doorstep, sick and trembling, afraid he would continue drinking through the day but even more afraid that he would get sober and have to look at himself in the hard light of day. The eastern sky was the color of a Tequila Sunrise, the mountains quaking with lightning. He sat on the steps and removed his piece from his clip-on holster and held it in both hands between his legs. He closed his eyes and imagined himself fitting the barrel between his teeth, touching the roof of his mouth, the astringent taste of gun lubricant mixing with his saliva.

Did Valhalla lie on the other side or only a great blackness? His life was a joke, hardly worth sustaining. One round fired upward into the brain would scroll his name on the wall, then it would be over.

Or perhaps he might take a few people with him. Behind him, he heard the door open.

Chapter 13

THAT SAME FRIDAY morning, as I headed to work, I saw Seth Masterson’s Cherokee parked on the side of the dirt road that led from my house onto the state highway. The driver’s door was open and Seth was behind the wheel, eating breakfast out of a McDonald’s container. The sun had just tipped the mountains on the east side of the valley, and the light looked like a tiny pink flame inside the needles of the ponderosa tree he had parked under.

I pulled behind him and got out.

“You talk to American Horse and the Finley girl about giving up the computer disks they stole from Global Research?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

He nodded, his impatience undisguised. He wiped his mouth with a crumpled paper napkin and dropped it into his plate. “Mind telling me why not?” he said.

“Because I’ve talked to Johnny about it before. He’s not going to give up his friends or tell them what to do.”

“Don’t tell me those Indians creeped that place without his permission. The girl’s dirty, too. You know it, Billy Bob.”

“You want to send her and Johnny a message, go do it yourself.”

He poured his coffee into the dust and set the empty container on the floorboards of his vehicle. He stared at the coffee soaking into the dirt. “You used to be a good cop. Maybe you ought to rethink who your friends are,” he said.

“Sorry you feel that way, Seth.”

He shut the door and drove perhaps ten yards down the road, then

stopped and got out, the vituperative moment gone. He had put on a tan cap with a green big-mouth bass imprinted on it and the cap’s bill darkened the upper half of his face, but I could tell he was smiling. “My wife and I have a cabin west of Walsenburg. Come down sometime and help me deplete the rainbow population,” he said.

AROUND 9 A.M. that same day, Darrel McComb sat in an uncomfortable chair, staring across the desk at Fay Harback, trying to take shallow breaths through his nose so the alcohol deep down in his lungs did not blow into her face. He had showered at Greta’s, shaved with her leg razor, and used her toothbrush to scrub the taste of tequila out of his mouth, then had driven at high speed through traffic in order to reach the office with a semblance of punctuality. But his jaws were nicked, his eyes scorched, and his shirt and suit smelled as though they had been pulled from a dirty clothes hamper.