Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?We?re not sure. He?s a big player in Arizona and Nevada and California. He owns whole networks of whores and porn studios and has a lot of outlaw bikers muling his tar and crystal meth up from the border. How much China white do you see here??

?Not much. It?s upscale stuff. Addicts with money can smoke it and not worry about needles and AIDS.?

?DEA says a two-million-dollar shipment was off-loaded from a two-engine plane that landed on a highway in your county last week.?

?Tell them thanks for letting us in on that.?

?If you were looking for Vikki Gaddis and Pete Flores down in the Big Bend, where would you start??

?I?d have to give that some thought.?

?You don?t like us much, do you?? Riser drank from his beer and wiped his mouth.

?I like y?all just fine. I just don?t trust you,? Hackberry said.

THAT NIGHT HACKBERRY ate dinner by himself in a back booth at a restaurant out on the highway, his Stetson crown-down on the seat beside him. Working-class families were lined up at the salad bar, and country music filtered through the swinging doors of the lounge annex on the far side of the cashier?s counter. He saw Pam Tibbs enter the front door with an athletic-looking man dressed in sport clothes and shined loafers, his dark hair wet-combed and sun-bleached at the tips, his face confident and tanned and unwrinkled by either worry or age. Pam wore a purple skirt and black pumps and a black top with a gold cross and chain; she had just had her hair cut and looked not only lovely but ten years younger than her age in the way that women look when they love someone. When she saw Hackberry, she jiggled her fingers at him and went inside the lounge with her friend.

Ten minutes later, she came back out of the swinging doors and sat down across from Hackberry. He could smell her perfume and the hint of bourbon and ice and crushed cherries on her breath. ?Join us,? she said.

?Who is ?us??? he asked, and wondered if she caught the tinge of resentment in his voice.

?My cousin and me. His wife will be here in a few minutes,? she said, her fingers spreading on the table, her expression not quite able to contain her surprise at his reaction.

?Thanks, I have to get home.?

?Hack??

?What??

?Come on.?

?Come on, what??

He felt her foot touch his under the table. ?Ease up,? she said.

?Pam??

?I mean it. Give yourself a break. People can?t be alone all the time.?

?You?re my chief deputy. Act like it,? he said. He looked sideways to see if anyone had heard him.

?What if I am?? she said, leaning forward now.

?I?d like to finish my dinner.?

?You make me mad. I want to hit you sometimes.?

?I?m going to get some salad.?

?Your chicken-fried steak will get cold.?

Hackberry thought he might have discovered the source of many unexplained brain aneurysms.

THAT NIGHT HE returned home and sat on a folding chair in the yard under a sky that roiled with thunderclouds. It was not a rational act. The hour was late, the wind bending the poplar trees at the foot of his property, the air filled with bits of desiccated matter that stung his face like insects. Overhead, yellow pools of dry lightning flared and pulsed in the clouds but made no sound. Even though he had soaked the lawn that morning, the ground under his feet felt as hard

as brick. Five or six deer had clustered down in the trees as though preparing for an impending storm. Then he realized the deer were there for other reasons. On a rise just above his property, he saw the silhouettes of four coyotes slink across the crest. When lightning lit the sky behind them, he saw the yellow-gray of their coats, the peculiar way they hung their heads, the neck bones and jaws loose and not completely connected, a suggestion of slather on the teeth and lips.

Was this what it was all about? he wondered. One creature killing and eating another? Or even worse, the fanged predator with eyes in the front hunting down and tearing apart the gentle grass-eating animal born with eyes on the sides of its head, forever condemned to be food for coyotes and wolves and cougars and, finally, man with his sharpened stick?