Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

They were back in the shade, the wind rustling through the mulberry tree, the lawn suddenly cool and smelling of the damp soil he had turned over with a spading fork at sunrise. He felt the stiffness go out of her back and her hands relax on top of his.

?You finished?? he said.

She didn?t answer.

?Did you hear me??

?I?m done. Let me go,? she said.

He set her down and put his hands on her shoulders, turning her toward him. ?You just dropped both of us in the cook pot,? he said.

?I?m sorry.?

?Go in the house. I?m going to try to square it.?

?Not on my account.?

?Pam, this is one time you shut up and do what I say.?

She closed and opened her eyes as though awakening from a dream. Then she walked to the table and sat down on the bench and propped her hands on her knees and stared into space, her hair tousling in the breeze.

Hackberry went inside, took a first-aid kit and a handful of dish towels from a kitchen closet, and went back out front. Clawson was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, the door open, his feet on the gravel driveway; he was talking into a cell phone. The handkerchief wadded up in his left hand was almost entirely red. He closed the cell phone and dropped it on the seat.

?Did you call for the paramedics?? Hackberry said.

?No, I called my wife. I?m supposed to meet her in Houston tonight.?

?I?ll take you to emergency receiving.?

?You were a navy corpsman, Sheriff. Do what you need to do. This didn?t happen. I slipped on the metal stairs at the motel.?

Hackberry waited for him to go on.

?You heard me,? Clawson said.

?That?s the way you want it??

?We take down the guys who killed those Asian women and Junior Vogel. Nothing gets in the way of that objective. You tell your deputy what I said.?

?No, yo

u tell her.?

?Bring her out here,? Clawson said.

?You don?t take her to task.?

Clawson cleared his throat and pressed his handkerchief to a deep cut that was bleeding through his eyebrow. ?No problem.?

?Let?s take a look at your head, partner,? Hackberry said.

10

NICK DOLAN SWALLOWED a tranquilizer and a half glass of water, took Esther into his office, and closed the door behind him. With the dark velvet drapes closed and the air-conditioning set to almost freezing levels, there was an insularity about his office that made Nick feel not only isolated and safe but outside of time and place, as though he could rewind the video and erase all the mistakes he had made in his journey from the schoolyard playground in the Lower Ninth Ward to the day he bought into an escort service and the attendant association with people like Hugo Cistranos.

He told Esther everything that had happened during his abduction?the ride in the SUV down the highway to the empty farmhouse, Preacher Jack Collins sitting next to him, the New Orleans button man Hugo Cistranos and the strange kid in a top hat sitting in front, the moon wobbling under the surface of a pond whose banks glistened with green cow scat. Then he told Esther how the man called Preacher had spared him at the last moment because of her name.

?He thinks I?m somebody out of the Bible?? she said.