Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?How?s that??

?After the weirdo with the gun drove off, I went out back looking for the kid with the scar. I saw him there on the other side of the road in the moonlight, his shirttail flying, heading due north. He went over the top of a rail fence like he had wings on.?

?Did you get the weirdo?s tag number?? Hackberry asked.

?There was mud smeared on it.? The assistant manager lifted up a baseball bat and dropped it on top of the counter. ?The next time I see that guy, I?m gonna park his head over Yellow House Peak. Them FBI people are gonna be hauling off a man with no head.?

Hackberry and Pam got back in the cruiser, the air conditioner running, the sun white and straight overhead. ?Where to?? Pam asked.

?Danny Boy Lorca said Pete told him he?d met a guy at an A.A. meeting who tried to kill him,? Hackberry said. ?How many A.A. meetings are held on a given night in a rural area like this??

?Not many. Maybe one or two,? she said.

?You ever attend one??

?My mother did.?

?Let?s go back to that last town.?

She pulled out on the road, blowing gravel off the back tires. ?I?ve never seen you drink,? she said.

?What about it??

?I thought maybe you went to A.A. meetings at one time or another.?

?No, I just don?t drink anymore. When people ask about it, that?s what I tell them. ?I used to drink, but I don?t anymore.??

She looked across the seat at him, her eyes unreadable behind her shades. ?Why?d you quit??

There was a taste like pennies in his saliva. He rolled down the window and spat. He wiped his mouth and stared at the countryside sweeping by, the grass on the hillsides brown and bending in the wind, a cattle truck parked by a turnout where a historical marker stood, the cattle bawling in the heat. ?I quit because I didn?t want to be like other members of my family.?

?Alcoholism runs in your family??

?No, killing people does,? he said. ?They killed Indians, Mexicans, gunmen, Kaiser Bill?s heinies?anyone they could get in their sights, they blew the hell out of them.?

She concentrated on the road and was silent a long time.

At the intersection of the county and state highways, Hackberry used a pay phone to call the regional hotline of Alcoholics Anonymous. The woman who answered said that only one meeting was available in the area on the night Hackberry asked about. It was held in a white frame church house just north of the intersection where Hackberry was calling from.

?There?re some early-bird meetings. I also have a schedule for Terlingua and Marathon, if you don?t mind driving a piece,? she said.

?No, I think the one at the church is the one I?m interested in. That?s the only one here?bouts on Tuesday nights, right??

?That?s right.?

?Who can I talk to there??

?Anybody at the meeting.?

?No, I mean right now.?

?You think you?re going to drink??

?I?m an officer of the law, and I?m investigating a multiple homicide Hello??

?I have to think about what you just told me.? There was a short pause. ?I finished thinking about it. Thanks for calling the A.A. hotline. Goodbye.? The line went dead.

Hackberry and Pam drove through town and found the church on the east side of the state highway. A rail of a man was hammering shingles on the roof, his denim shirt buttoned at the throat and neck against the heat, his armpits dark with sweat, his knees spread like a clamp on the roof?s spine. Pam and Hackberry got out of the cruiser and looked up at him, trying to shield their eyes from the glare.