Desert Places (Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite Series 1)

Sipping the beer, I surveyed the empty bar—unadorned concrete walls, no jukebox or neon beer signs. There weren’t even cute cowboy slogans to fake the prairie culture for transient easterners like me. Just a drab, hopeless place for hopeless westerners to get drunk.

I finished the beer, and as though her ears were attuned to the sound of empty glasses clinking the wood, she came back through the door from the kitchen and stood in front of me.

“You want another one?” she asked.

“No thanks. Where is everyone?”

She looked at her watch. “It’s only six,” she said. “They don’t start getting here till seven.”

A car pulled up outside. I heard its tires lock up in the dirt.

“Where’s Ricki?” I asked.

“That son of a bitch is dead.”

She took my empty glass and set it in a brown plastic container.

“Would you do something for me?” I asked.

“What?” she said joylessly. She was possibly the most indifferent person I’d ever met. I wondered why she didn’t just go slice her wrists. I pushed the square of paper across the ties.

“I’m supposed to meet a friend here at nine, but I can’t. Will you give this to him?”

She looked suspiciously at the square of paper, then picked it up and jammed it in her back pocket.

A car door slammed outside.

“What’s he look like?” she asked.

“Shoulder-length black, black hair. Even darker than yours. Very white. Late twenties. Fairly tall. Dark eyes.”

At the same instant I heard footsteps approaching the door, she said, “Well hell, ain’t that him?”

I glanced over my shoulder and watched Luther Kite walk through the door. Sliding off the stool, I slipped my hand into my pocket and withdrew the Glock. By the time I’d chambered a bullet, he was standing in my face, looking down on me.

I took it in piecemeal. The reek of Windex. His blue windbreaker. Ebony hair against a smooth cheek. My finger moving once. Luther falling into me, clutching. Screaming behind the railroad ties. Gasping. Blood on nylon. My right hand warm and wet. Running through the dirt to the car. Cold. The spire of Chimney Rock now dark. The rushing prairie and the maroon hills as I sped toward Wyoming.

30

I pulled over after midnight onto the shoulder of I-80, halfway through Wyoming, outside the town of Wamsutter. There was no moon, so I had no sense of the land, except that it was even more expansive and forsaken than Nebraska. Pushing the suitcases onto the floor and curling up in the backseat, I closed my eyes. When cars passed on the interstate, the Lexus shuddered. I fell asleep wondering if Ricki’s had really happened.

I awoke at 3:30 a.m. to the sound of Orson moaning. When I climbed out and opened the trunk, he was flailing around inside, though his eyes were closed. I stirred him from the nightmare, and as he opened his eyes and regained cognizance of his surroundings, he sat up.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Middle of Wyoming.”

“I’m so thirsty.”

“You’ll have to wait till tomorrow.” He stretched out his arms and yawned.

“I heard a gunshot,” he said.

“Orson, how do I find the cabin?”

He lay back down. “Will you give me another shot?”

I sat on the bumper. “Of course.”

“This is I-Eighty, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay on Eighty till you hit Rock Springs. It’s in the southwest corner of the state. From Rock Springs, take One ninety-one north and start watching the odometer. When you’ve gone seventy miles, you’re gonna have to pull over and bring me up. I’ll take you the rest of the way.”

“All right.”

“Are we heading for it tonight?”

“Nah, I’m wiped. I’m gonna sleep till morning.”

“Andy, did you kill Luther?”

“I chickened out,” I said, standing up. “So you left him a note.”

“I know I—”

“You’re f**ked up. I’ll go get your shot.”

Over the course of two thousand miles, it was bound to happen.

Tuesday morning, I’d passed the exits for Red Desert, Table Rock, Bitter Creek, and Point of Rocks, when thirty miles east of Rock Springs, I heard the whine of a siren—a Highway Patrol SUV crowded my bumper. With my Glock wedged into the pouch behind the passenger seat, I pulled over into the emergency lane, reassuring myself, Why would he want to search the car? Orson’s unconscious. I’ve got the proper license and registration. Ricki’s may not have even happened. I’m golden.

The officer tapped on my window. I lowered it.

“License and registration,” he said in that austere, authoritative tone, and removing the papers from the glove compartment, I smiled and handed them through the window.

He walked bowlegged back to his hunter green Bronco and climbed inside.

The clock in the dashboard read 10:15, but it felt later. The prairie had turned arid. Across the northwestern horizon, a chain of tan hills rose out of the flatland. Gray clouds massed beyond.

I noticed the sweater and jeans I’d worn into Ricki’s lying on the floorboard on the passenger side. It happened. They were stained with Luther’s blood, and I regretted not having thrown them out last night at the gas station in Cheyenne. I started to scoop them up, but the gravelly crunch of the officer’s footsteps stopped me.

I righted myself and looked back through the open window into his face. The officer was my age. He reminded me of a lawman in a movie, though I couldn’t recall which one.

“Know why I stopped you, Mr. Parker?” he asked, handing back Orson’s license and registration. I placed them on the passenger seat.

“No sir, officer.”

He removed his reflective sunglasses and stared down at me through hard, pale eyes.

“You were swerving all over the goddamn road.”

“I was?”

“Are you drunk?” A gust of wind lifted his hat, which he caught and shelved under his arm. He had unruly blond hair, the variety that, if allowed to grow out, might bush into an Afro. The image of the officer with a blond Afro lightened my heart, and I chortled.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing, sir. I’m not drunk. I’m tired. I’ve been driving for the past two days.”

“From Vermont?”

“Yes, sir.”

He glanced at the suitcases in the backseat. “Traveling alone?”

“Yes, sir.”