Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?Yes, you were. You hurt me bad,? she said, cupping her hand to one shoulder.

?Get out of here, you little skank,? Eriksson said. He bolted the door behind her, his attention never leaving Hackberry. ?Slickered you, motherfucker.?

Hackberry let his eyes become dead and unseeing, let them drift off Eriksson?s face to a spot on the wall. Or perhaps to a patch of red sky that should not have been visible inside a women?s restroom.

?Did you hear me?? Eriksson asked.

?You?re a smart one,? Hackberry said.

?You got that right.?

Then Eriksson seemed to realize something was wrong in his environment, that he had not seen or taken note of something, that in spite of his years of vanquishing his enemies and shaving the odds and orchestrating events so that he always walked away a winner, something had gone terribly wrong. ?Get on your cell,? he said.

?What for??

?What do you mean, what for? Tell your people to stay away from the building. Tell them to bring a car to the back.?

?You?re not getting a car.?

?I?ll get a car or you?ll catch the bus, whichever you prefer.?

?You?re leaving here in cuffs.?

Eriksson took his own cell phone from his pocket and tossed it to Hackberry. It bounced off Hackberry?s chest and fell to the floor. ?Pick it up and make the call, Sheriff,? Eriksson said.

?I said you?re a smart one. A smart man is a listener. Listen to what I say and don?t turn around. No, no, keep your eyes on me. You do not want to turn around.?

?Are you senile? I?m holding a shotgun in your face.?

?If you turn around, you?ll lose your head,? Hackberry said. ?Look straight ahead. Kneel down and place your weapon on the floor.?

Eriksson?s lips parted. They were dry, caked slightly with mucus. His hands tightened on the twelve-gauge. He crimped his lips, wetting them before he spoke. ?This has got a hair trigger. No matter what happens, you?re gonna have a throat full of bucks.?

?Believe what I tell you, Eriksson. Don?t move, don?t back away from me, don?t turn around. If you do any of those things, you will die. I give you my word on that. No one wants to see that happen to you. But it?s your choice. You lower your weapon by the barrel with your left hand and place it on the floor and step away from it.?

?I think you?re a mighty good actor, Sheriff, but I also think you?re full of shit.?

Eriksson stepped backward, out of Hackberry?s reach, turning his line of vision toward a frosted back window that had been wedged open with a tire tool. For just a moment, the aim of his shotgun angled away from Hackberry?s chest. Outside, a huge cloud of orange dust gusted across the sun.

Eriksson?s translucent blue eyes were charged with light. His face seemed to twitch just before he saw Pam Tibbs standing slightly beyond the window ledge, her khaki shirt speckled with taco sauce, her chrome-plated revolver aimed in front of her with both hands. That was when she squeezed the trigger, driving a soft-nosed .357 round through one side of his head and out the other.

15

PREACHER JACK COLLINS lived at several residences, none of which carried his name on a deed or a rental agreement. One of them was located south of old Highway 90, within sight of the Del Norte Mountains, twenty miles deep into broken desert terrain that looked composed of crushed stone knitted together by the roots of scrub brush and mesquite and cactus that bloomed with bloodred flowers.

On the mountain behind his one-bedroom stucco house was a series of ancient telegraph poles whose wires hung on the ground like strands of black spaghetti. Behind the poles was the gaping opening of a rock-walled root cellar that had been shored up with wood posts and crossbeams that either had collapsed or that insects had reduced to the weightless density of cork.

One starlit night, Preacher had sat in the entrance and watched the desert take on the gray and blue and silver illumination that it seemed to draw down into itself from the sky, as though the sky and the earth worked together to both cool the desert and turn it into a pewter artwork. Then he had realized that a breeze was blowing into his face and flowing over his arms and shoulders and into the excavation at his back. The root cellar was not a root cellar after all. Nor was it a mine. It was a cave, deep and spiraling, one that had probably been formed by water millions of years ago, one that led to the other side of the mountain or a cavern far beneath it. Perhaps early settlers had framed up the walls and ceilings with timbered support, but Preacher was convinced no human hand had contributed to its creation.

He spent many evenings sitting on a metal chair in front of the cave, wondering if the wind echoing inside it spoke to him and if indeed the desert was not an ancient vineyard made sterile by man?s infidelity to Yahweh. Paradoxically, that thought comforted him. The sinfulness of the world somehow gave him a greater connection to it, made him more acceptable in his own eyes and simultaneously reduced the level of his own iniquity. Except Preacher had one problem he could not rid himself of: He had filled the ground with the bodies of Oriental women and watched while Hugo?s bulldozer had scalloped up the earth and pushed the backfill over them. He told himself he had been acting as a

n agent of God, purging the world of an abomination, perhaps even preempting the moral decay and diseases that had awaited them as prostitutes on the streets of a corrupt nation.

But Preacher was having little success with his rationalization for the mass execution of the helpless and terrified women who waited for him nightly in his sleep. When Bobby Lee Motree arrived at Preacher?s house in the desert, Jack was delighted by the distraction.

He set up two metal chairs in front of the cave and opened cold bottles of Coca-Cola for the two of them and watched while Bobby Lee drank his empty, his throat pumping, one eye fastened curiously on Preacher. Bobby Lee was wearing a muscle shirt and his top hat and his brown jeans that had yellow canvas squares stitched on the knees. He was full of confidence and cheer at being back in Preacher?s good graces; he unloaded his burden, telling Preacher how Liam got popped by the female deputy sheriff in the restaurant and how that rat bastard Artie Rooney had told Hugo to smoke everybody?the soldier and his girl, the Jewish guy and his wife and maybe even the Jewish guy?s kids, and finally, Preacher himself.

?If you cain?t trust Artie Rooney, who can you trust? The standards of our profession have seriously declined,? Preacher said.