Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

Hackberry rolled a folder filled with eight-by-ten photos into a cone and stuck it in the side pocket of his trousers, then focused the binoculars on a rocky flume rimmed by mesquite and scrub oak and willow trees. The sky above the hills looked like green gas, the air glistening with heat and humidity, the shell of an automobile half buried in the bleached-out earth, the metal wind-polished as bright as foil. But the contemporary story of this particular place was written across the bottom of the flume. It was layered with moldy clothes, scraps of plastic tarp, tennis shoes split at the seams, smeared toilet paper, spoiled food, empty water bottles, discarded sanitary napkins, and plastic diapers slathered with feces. A circle of turkey buzzards floated just above the hills, the edges of their wings feathering in the wind.

“She used to be part of that Underground Railroad or whatever?” Pam said.

“Up in Kansas, I think,” Hackberry said. “But I wouldn’t put it in the past tense.”

“You call the feds yet?”

“I haven’t gotten to it.”

He could feel her staring at the side of his face.

“If I can make a suggestion—” she began.

“Don’t,” he said.

“You were a lawyer for the ACLU. That name has the status of whale shit around here. Why add to your problems?”

“Can you stop using that language on the job? I think both you and Maydeen have an incurable speech defect.”

He had stepped into it again, allying his dispatcher Maydeen Stoltz with Pam; they were undefeatable when they joined forces against him, to the extent that he sometimes had to lock his office door and pretend he was gone from the building.

“You don?

??t know how to cover your ass,” Pam said. “So others have to do it for you. Ask anybody in the department. Your constituency might tell you they love Jesus, but the truth is, they want you to grease the bad guys and not bother them with details.”

“I can’t believe I’m the sheriff of this county and I have to listen to this. And I mean listen to it every day.”

“That’s the problem. Your heart is too big. You need to be more assertive. Ask Maydeen.” Pam took the binoculars from his hand and replaced them in the leather case and dropped the case on the driver’s seat. “I say too much?”

“No, why would you possibly think that?” he replied.

But Pam’s hands were on her hips, and she was obviously thinking about something else. “This woman is supposed to perform miracles? She’s Our Lady of Lourdes out on the plains?”

“No,” he said. “No, I mean I don’t know. I can’t keep up with your conversation. I can’t track your thoughts, Pam. You’re impossible to talk with.”

“What you’re not hearing is that other people know your weak spot. Don’t let this Chinese broad jerk you around. Too many people around here already hate your guts. Wake up. You’re kind to the wrong people.”

“I don’t see it that way. Not at all.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

Hackberry fitted on his Stetson and widened his eyes, letting the moment pass, his face tight in the wind. “When we talk with this lady, we remember who we are. We treat people with respect, particularly when they’ve paid their share of dues.”

“People with causes have a way of letting others do their time on the cross. Tell me I’m full of shit. I double-dare you.”

Hackberry felt as if someone had set a small nail between his eyes and slowly tapped it into his head with a tack hammer.

It was hard to estimate the age of the Asian woman who came to the door. She had a compact figure, and wore dark glasses and a white dress with black ribbon threaded through the top of the bodice, and looked no older than a woman in her early forties. But Darl Wingate, the coroner, had told Hackberry that she had lived through Japanese incendiary raids and the massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops, and perhaps had worked for Claire Chennault’s Civil Air Transport. The latter had overtones Hackberry didn’t want to think about.

He removed his hat when he stepped inside and let his eyes adjust to the poorly lit interior of her home. The furniture looked secondhand, the couch and chairs covered with cheap fabric, the rugs threadbare, an ancient glass wall case stuffed with books probably bought at yard sales. “We’re looking for a man who may have been an intended victim in a homicide, Ms. Ling,” he said.

“Why do you think he’s here?” she asked.

Through the back window he could see a stucco cottage by a slat-wall barn, alongside a flat-roofed, oblong building that once could have been a bunkhouse. “Because you live in the middle of an unofficial international highway?” he said.

“What’s this man’s name?” she asked.

“We don’t know. The FBI does, but we don’t,” he answered.