Again he jumped, again he locked hands around the beam. His toehold this time was firmer; he dug his boot hard into the mesh, lifting with arms and shoulders, pain in the straining muscles, pain a roaring stroke in his head. He got one knee over the lip, slipped, held on, and heaved upward — and he was onto the gallery, crawling under the railing and then lying flat on the rough boards.
He lay there for seconds or minutes, until his pulse rate slowed. The fear-drain left him with leaden limbs and dulled thoughts. He shoved onto all fours, got to his feet with the aid of the railing. Standing, he could see over the top of the outer wall. On the highway a tractor-trailer rig rumbled by, heading toward Beulah. Beyond the highway, dusk crawled in plum-colored shadows across the desert flats, lay ink-black in the creases and notches of the hills. Time distortion: It seemed that he must have been in the pit for an hour or more, when in fact it hadn’t been much more than ten minutes.
He moved closer to the fence, to look down into Herb Mackey’s yard. His Subaru was parked where he’d left it; from here it appeared untouched. The dirty white pickup was long gone from behind the house trailer.
Wobbly-legged, using the railing, he made his way to the gallery door. It was neither locked nor barred. A short flight of steps took him down into the shed. When he reached the car he opened the driver’s door and sat on the edge of the seat without getting in. His fingers were clumsy as he unlaced his right boot, took it off. Small spot of sticky venom on his sock; he dragged the sock off. Just below his ankle bone were a pair of faint reddish marks that were tender to the touch. He held his breath while he probed them, then let it out in a thin sigh. The skin was unbroken.
He leaned in to adjust the mirror so he could examine the right side of his head. The skin had been broken there, but the gash was neither long nor deep. The blood on the wound and on the hair around it was dirt-flecked and coagulating. Not much physical damage, really. Most of his anguish had been mental.
Another test passed, barely. The edge this time had been needle-sharp, as sharp as the diamondback’s fangs.
The sun was gone now, darkness closing in. He sat slumped, elbows resting on his thighs — waiting until he felt strong enough to put his sock and boot back on and then to drive.
15
Sheriff Espinosa looked at him as if he were either drunk or demented. “That’s the goddamnedest story I’ve heard in years,” he said.
“Every word is true.”
“Herb Mackey died four weeks ago. Heart attack. First thing we did was destroy his snakes, and his place has been closed up ever since.”
“I had no way of knowing that,” Messenger said. “I believed the man on the phone; why wouldn’t I? And I told you, they covered the lower half of the highway sign — the words Rattlesnake Farm and the Closed sticker over them. I tore the burlap off before I left.”
“Still doesn’t make much sense.”
“Look at me. You think I hit myself on the head? Scratched my hands and arms, ripped and dirtied my clothes? All just to come in here and file a false report?”
“For all I know,” Espinosa said, “you were in a brawl. Put your nose in somewhere it wasn’t wanted.”
His head still ached and the anger in him had risen close to the surface. He bit back a sharp reply and replaced it with, “Go out to Mackey’s then. Look around. Those two snakes are still in the pit, along with God knows how many more.”
“Proving what? They could’ve crawled in there on their own. Diamondbacks and sidewinders grow like weeds in this country.”
“So you’re not going to do anything.”
Espinosa leaned back in his chair, making the swivel mechanism creak. The only other sound in the Sheriff’s Department at City Hall was static from the dispatcher’s radio. Messenger had caught the baked apple just as he was about to leave for the day; now he was beginning to think he shouldn’t have bothered coming here at all.
“What would you have me do?” Espinosa asked at length. He had his pipe out and was loading it methodically with black shag-cut tobacco. “Two men, you said, but you didn’t get a look at either of them and you didn’t recognize the voice on the phone or the voice of the one who spoke to you at Mackey’s. I don’t suppose you noticed the license plate on the pickup?”
“No. I didn’t pay much attention to the truck. I thought it was Mackey’s, that it belonged there.”
“What make and model?”
“I’m not sure. American-made, I think.”
“What color? What year?”
“White. Not old but not new either. It had a broken radio antenna, I remember that much.”
“American-made, white, not old and not new. You know how many pickups in this county fit that description, even with the busted antenna?”
“All right,” Messenger said.
“And there’s still the point of the whole thing. Why would these two men go to all the trouble of trapping or buying two or more rattlers, luring you out there, and then blindsiding you and locking you in with the snakes? There’re easier ways to warn a man to mind his own business.”
“It was more than a warning. They didn’t care if I was bitten and died in that pit.”
“You weren’t bitten and the odds were that you wouldn’t be, unless you landed on top of one of the critters.” Espinosa paused to light his pipe. He liked the taste of the smoke; a small smile appeared around the teeth-clamped bit. “Besides, if you had been bitten, you’d likely have survived. Not many people die of rattlesnake bites, Mr. Messenger. It’s a myth that they do.”
“Maybe so, but some people do die. And the ones that don’t get deathly sick. I tell you, it was more than a warning. It was attempted murder.”
“Why would anybody around here want you dead?”
“You know why, Sheriff.”
“Stirring up a matter better left alone is hardly cause for attempted murder.”
“It is if I’m right and somebody other than Anna Roebuck is responsible for those two killings. That person is afraid I might get at the truth.”
“Who? Got any ideas about that?”
“All I know is, I’ve had warnings from John T. Roebuck and from Joe Hanratty and Tom Spears.”
Espinosa’s eyes took on a glass-hard shine. “You saying it could be John T. wants you dead?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m giving you information so you can do your job.”
“John T.’s great-grandfather was one of Beulah’s first settlers. Him and his family are the best friends this town has ever had. I know John T.; known him all my life. He’s never harmed a single person, not one.”
Then why do his sister-in-law and Jaime Orozco dislike him so much? Why is his wife a drunk? Why did he come on to me like Brando playing the Godfather?
Messenger said, “And I suppose Hanratty and Spears are Godfearing pillars of the community, too.”
“They’re not killers.”
“Neither was Anna Roebuck.”
Espinosa stared at him, hard, for a clutch of seconds. Messenger matched the stare with an unblinking intensity of his own. “You know what I think, Mr. Messenger?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea. Quit my crusade and get out of town while I’m still alive.”
“That isn’t what I was going to say.”
“Different words, maybe, but the same message. Another warning. Well, I’m sick of warnings and I’m damned if I’ll stand still for an attempt on my life.”