?You coming to the office??
?Why wouldn?t I??
?You eat yet??
?Yeah, I think I did. Yeah, I?m sure I did.?
She sat on the step below him and unscrewed the top of the thermos and popped open the bag of doughnuts. She poured coffee into the thermos top and wrapped a doughnut in a napkin and handed both to him. ?You worry me sometimes,? she said.
?Pam, I?m your administrative superior. That means we don?t personalize certain kinds of considerations.?
She glanced at her watch. ?Until eight A.M. I?ll do what I damn please. How do you like that? Can I get a cup out of your kitchen??
He started to answer, but she opened the screen door and went inside before he could speak. When she came back out, she filled her cup and sat down beside him. ?Clawson went in without backup. His death is not on either one of us,? she said.
?I didn?t say it was.?
?But you thought it.?
?Jack Collins got away. We were probably within a hundred feet of him. But he got out of the motel and out of the parking lot and probably out of San Antonio while I was tracking an ICE agent?s blood all over the crime scene.?
?That?s not what?s bothering you, is it??
When he blinked, like a camera lens clatching open and closing just as quickly, he saw the faces of the Asian women staring up at him from the killing ground behind the stucco church, grains of dirt on their lips and in their nostrils and hair.
?Ballistics shows that all the women were killed by the same weapon,? he said. ?There was probably only one shooter. From what the FBI knows about Collins, he seems to be the one most capable of that kind of mass murder. We could have put Collins out of business.?
?We will. Or if we don?t get to him first, the feds will.?
Hackberry looked at the doe with her fawns in the poplar trees and could feel Pam?s eyes on the side of his face. He thought of his twin sons and his dead wife and the sound the wind made at night when it channeled through the grass in the pasture. Pam moved her foot slightly and touched the side of her shoe against his boot. ?Are you listening to me, Hack??
He could feel a great fatigue seep through his body. He cupped his hands on his knees and turned his head toward her. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes. ?I?m too old,? he said.
?Too old for what??
?The things young people do.?
?Like what??
?You got me. How about we change the subject??
?You?re a stubborn and unteachable man. That?s why somebody needs to look after you.?
He got to his feet, shifting a growing pocket of pain out of his spine. ?I must have committed some terrible sins in my past life,? he said.
She drank from her coffee, her gaze lifting to his. He let out his breath and went inside to get his hat and gun before going to the office.
THREE DAYS LATER, at five P.M., Ethan Riser called Hackberry at the department and asked him to have a drink.
?Where are you?? Hackberry asked.
?At the hotel.?
?What are you doing down here??
?Soliciting some help.?
?The FBI can?t handle its problems on its own??