Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

THE SKY WAS gray with dust as they drove back down the state highway toward town, Pam Tibbs behind the wheel.

?I talked to my cousin Billy Bob Holland,? Hackberry said. ?He?s a former Texas Ranger and practices law in western Montana. He?s known Pete Flores since he was a little boy. He says Pete was the best little boy he ever knew. He also says he was the smartest.?

?These days it?s not hard for a good kid to get in trouble.?

?Billy Bob says he?d bet his life this boy is innocent of any wrongdoing, at least of the kind we?re talking about.?

?My father was in Vietnam. He was psychotic when he came home. He hanged himself in a jail cell.? Pam?s eyes were straight ahead, her hands in the ten-two position on the steering wheel, her expression as empty as a wood carving.

?Pull on the shoulder,? Hackberry said.

?What for??

?That road bull is waving at us,? he replied.

The inmates were from a contract prison and wore orange jumpsuits. They were strung out in a long line on the swale, picking up litter and stuffing it into vinyl bags they tied and left on the shoulder. A green bus with steel mesh on the windows was parked up ahead. So was a flatbed diesel truck with a horse trailer anchored to the back bumper. One mounted gunbull was at the back and another at the head of the line working along the road. An unarmed man in a gray uniform with red piping on the collar and pockets stood on the swale, waiting for the cruiser. He wore yellow-tinted aviator shades and an elegant white straw cowboy hat. His uniform was flecked with chaff blowing off the hard pan. His neck and face were deeply lined, like the skin on a turtle. Neither Hackberry nor Pam Tibbs knew him.

?What?s going on, Cap?? Hackberry said, getting out of the cruiser.

?See that Hispanic boy over yonder with Gothic-letter tats all over him?? A polished brass tag on the captain?s pocket said RICKER.

?Yes, sir?? Hack said.

?He killed a bar owner with a knife ?cause the bar owner wouldn?t return the money this kid lost in the rubber machine. Guess what he just found back there in the rocks? I almost downloaded in my britches when he handed it to me.?

?What?d he find?? Hackberry said.

The captain removed a stainless-steel revolver from his pants pocket. ?It?s an Airweight thirty-eight, a five-rounder. Two caps already popped. Don?t worry. The hammer is sitting on a spent casing.?

Hackberry removed a ballpoint from his shirt pocket and put it through the trigger guard and removed the revolver from Ricker?s hand. Pam Tibbs got a Ziploc bag from the cruiser and placed the revolver inside it.

?I shouldn?t have handled it?? Ricker said.

?You did all the right things. I appreciate your waving us down,? Hackberry said.

?That ain?t all of it. Better take a look over here,? Ricker said. He walked ahead and pointed at a grassy spot where, during the rainy season, water ran off the road into the swale. ?I suspect somebody is a pint or two down right now.?

Over a wide area, the grass was stippled with blood, and in places the blood had pooled and dried on top of the dirt. Pam Tibbs squatted down and looked at the grass and the broken blades and the depressions in it and the areas where the blood smears had taken on the characteristics of a body drag. She stood up and walked back toward the cruiser, in the direction of the truck stop and diner, and squatted down again. ?I?d say there were two vehicles here, Sheriff,? she said. ?My guess is the victim was shot about here, close to vehicle one, then was dragged, or dragged himself, on up to vehicle two. But why would the shooter throw away the weapon??

?Maybe it wasn?t his. Or rather, it wasn?t hers,? Hackberry said.

?You want to print me and that Hispanic boy to exclude us when you dust the gun?? Ricker said.

?Yep. And we need to wrap the crime scene. Some feds will probably be talking to you later.?

?What the hell the feds want with me??

?You heard about all those Asian women who were murdered??

?That?s what this is about? I got enough grief, Sheriff.?

?That makes two of us. Welcome to the New American Empire, Cap.?

5

AS HE LAY in a bed with a view of a chicken yard, a railed pen with six goats inside it, and a bladeless, rusted slip of a windmill strung with dead brush blown from a field of weeds, the man whose nickname was Preacher could not get the woman out of his mind, nor the scent of her fear and sweat and perfume while he wrestled with her on the ground, nor the expression on her face when she fired the .38 round through the top of his foot, exploding a jet of blood from the sole of his shoe. Her expression hadn?t been one of shock or pity, as Preacher would have expected; it had been one of triumph.

No, that wasn?t it, either. What he had seen in her face was loathing and disgust. She had fried his eyes with wasp spray, taken his weapon, shot him at close quarters, crushed his cell phone with her tire, and left him to bleed out like a piece of roadkill. She had also taken the time to call him bubba and inform him he had gotten off easy. She had done all this to a man considered by some, in terms of potential, to be one notch below the scourge of God.