Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?You should eat something,? she said.

?My main meal is always at evening. And it?s a half meal at that. Know why that is??

?You?re on a diet??

?A horse always has a half tank in him. He has enough fuel in his stomach to deal with or elude his enemies, but not too much to slow him down.?

She feigned attention to his words but was clearly not listening. Bobby Lee had put a paper napkin under her plate. She slipped it out and set one of the sandwich squares on it. ?Take this. It?s high in both protein and sugar.?

?I don?t want it.?

?Your mother gave you too many peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches when you were little? Maybe that?s why you?re always out of sorts.?

?My mother fixed whatever a gandy dancer brought to the boxcar where we lived. That was where she made her living, too. Behind a blanket hung over a rope.?

?What happened to her??

?She took a fall off some rocks.?

When Esther didn?t reply, he said, ?That was after she poisoned her husband. Or deliberately fed him spoiled food. It took him a while to die.?

?You?re making that up.? Before he could answer, she wrapped the piece of sandwich in the napkin and set it on his knee.

?I?ve always heard Jewish women are compulsive feeders. Thanks but no thanks,? he said, setting the sandwich square on the table.

She continued to eat, her shoulders slightly stooped, a demure quality settling over her that seemed to intrigue and arouse him.

?A woman like you is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of person,? he said.

?You?re very kind,? she said, her eyes lowered.

BY DARK HACKBERRY Holland and Pam Tibbs had had no luck finding the residence that might have been occupied by the man using the name B. Traven. On the back roads, in the blowing rain and tumbleweeds and darkness, they could find few mile markers or rural mailboxes with numbers or houses that were lighted. A crew on a utility truck told them there had been a giant power failure from Fort Stockton down to the border. No one, including the sheriff?s department, had any knowledge of a man by the name of B. Traven. One deputy who had worked previously at the tax assessor?s office volunteered that Traven was an absentee landowner who resided in New Mexico and rented his property to hippies or people who cam

e and went with the season or tended to live off the computer.

At nine-thirty P.M. Hackberry and Pam took adjoining rooms at a motel south of Alpine. The motel had a generator that created enough power to keep the motel functional during the storm, the outside lights glowing with the low intensity and yellow dullness of sodium lamps. A number of revelers had taken refuge there, talking loudly in the parking lot and on the concourse, slamming metal doors so hard the walls shook, carrying twelve-packs and fast food to their rooms. As Hackberry looked out the window at the darkness of the night, at the lightning flashes in the clouds, at the leak of electric sparks from a damaged transformer that was trying to come back on line, he thought of candles flickering in a graveyard.

He closed the curtain and sat on the bed in the dark and called the department. Maydeen Stoltz picked up.

?You?re not on duty tonight,? he said.

?You and Pam are. Why shouldn?t I be??

?So far we haven?t gotten any leads on B. Traven or the guy calling himself Fred C. Dobbs. Did you hear anything from Ethan Riser??

?Nothing. But Nick Dolan was here. Boy, was he here.?

?What happened??

?I put some earplugs in. I mean that literally. That guy has a voice like a herd of pygmies. He went into your office without permission and said he?d wait there until you got back. That?s not all.?

?What?s the rest of it??

?Did you have the flag folded up in your drawer??

?Yeah, I did.?

?I think he took it. The drawer was open when he left, and the flag wasn?t in it.?