By the time a deputy in a cruiser got to the house and I went back down to the river with him, Moon had disappeared.
'What's wrong, Billy Bob?' Pete said later in the kitchen.
'Nothing, bud. Everything's solid.'
Don't let Moon wound you, I told myself. That's his power over people. He makes them hate themselves.
'You want some ice cream?' Pete asked.
'Not tonight.'
He continued to stare at me with a puzzled look, then I heard Temple's car in the drive and a moment later Pete going out the screen door for his ride back to her house.
It's the moment every decent cop dreads. It comes unexpectedly, out of nowhere, like a freight train through a wall. Later, when you play the tape over and over again, seeking justification, wondering if there were alternatives, you're left invariably with the last frame on the spool, the only one that counts, and it tells you daily what your true potential is.
Mary Beth went back on duty after only two days' rest.
The 911 call reporting a trespasser and disturbing-the-peace incident at the skeet club should have required little more than the dispatch of a cruiser, perhaps a mediation, perhaps escorting someone off the property or even putting him in jail for twenty-four hours.
Vernon Smothers started looking for Jack Vanzandt at his office, then his home and the yacht basin and the country club. It was late afternoon when he found his way to the skeet club and parked by the pavilion in front of the row of traps that sailed clay pigeons toward a distant treeline.
Bunny Vogel saw him first, saw the energy in his face that was like both anger and fear at the same time, and walked from the pavilion to intercept him.
'You a guest here this evening, Mr Smothers?' Bunny asked.
Vernon's khakis and denim shirt were pressed and clean, his white straw hat tilted on the back of his head, his eyes wide, unblinking. A heated, dry odor seemed to envelop his skin and his clothes.
'You got to be a member or a guest, Mr Smothers. You can go over to the clubhouse there and see about a membership…'
'I see Emma Vanzandt there. Where's her husband at?' Vernon said.
'Sir, I don't think this is a good idea. I'm sorry for what happened to Lucas. I mean, I'm sorry for my part in it…' He gestured in the air, then his voice trailed off.
Jack Vanzandt, Sammy Mace, and a middle-aged man with a ponytail and thick lips and glasses that magnified his eyes walked out of the squat, green building that served as a clubhouse and approached the pavilion. Jack had the breech of a double-barrel shotgun cracked open on his forearm.
Vernon put one hand on Bunny's shoulder and moved him aside, as he would push open a door.
'I ain't up to no traveling shit storms today, Mr Smothers. I got orders about-' Bunny began.
But Vernon was already walking away from him as though he were not there.
Jack and Sammy Mace and the man with the ponytail sat down at a plank table with Emma Vanzandt. None of them paid attention to Vernon Smothers until he was three feet from their table.
'How you doin', Vernon?' Jack said.
'Your boy and his friends vandalized my house and humiliated my son,' Vernon said.
'I don't think that's true,' Jack said.
'Go ask Bunny Vogel. He's the little Judas Iscariot hepped Darl do it.'
Jack blew out his breath.
'This isn't the place for it. Come to my office,' he said.
'I know you for the type man you are, Jack Vanzandt. That man next to you is a goddamn criminal,' Vernon said.
'Hey! This is a private club here. You watch your language,' Sammy Mace said.
'Get up, Jack,' Vernon said.
The man with the ponytail put his hand on top of Jack's forearm. 'It's all right. I'll walk this guy to his truck. Is that your truck there, big man?' he said.
'No,' Jack said. 'Listen, Vernon. Kids get into trouble. It doesn't make it any better if the parents fight. Now-'
Vernon reached out and, with the flat of his hand, popped Jack on one cheek.
'You ain't no war hero. You just a rich man bought all the right people,' he said.
'Jack, put an end to this,' Emma said.
But Bunny Vogel had already called the sheriff's department, and Mary Beth's cruiser had been only two hundred yards from the skeet club when the dispatcher's voice came over her radio.
She turned off the highway and drove onto the grass almost to the pavilion, got out of her cruiser and slipped her baton through the ring on her belt.
She went straight for the source of the problem, Vernon Smothers.
'You're trespassing, sir… No, there won't be any debate about it. You get in your truck and drive back on the highway,' she said.
'Hey, we got the marines here,' Sammy Mace said.
'You shut up,' Mary Beth said.
'What?' Sammy said.
'In your truck, Mr Smothers,' Mary Beth said.
'Hey, what'd you just say to me?' Sammy Mace asked.
'I said you stay out of this unless you want to go to jail,' she replied.
Sammy opened his hands and made a shocked expression to the man in the ponytail.
'You believe this broad?' he asked.
'Last chance,' Mary Beth said.
'You got no right to be impolite. We're not the offending parties here,' the man in the ponytail said.
'We're out of here, Jack. Right now,' Emma said.
Mary Beth cupped her hand around Vernon's arm.
'Walk with me, sir,' she said.
But she knew it was unraveling now, in the way that dreams take you in high-speed cars over the edges of canyons and cliffs.
Sammy Mace walked up behind her and punched her with one finger between the shoulder blades.
'No cunt talks to me like that. Hey, did you hear me? I'm talking here. Turn around and look at me,' Sammy said, and punched her again with his finger.
She slipped her baton from its ring and whipped it across Sammy's left arm. Even from ten yards away, Bunny Vogel said he heard the bone break.
Sammy's face went white with pain and shock. He cradled his arm against his chest, his mouth trembling. Then he extended his right hand, like an inverted claw, toward the man in the ponytail.
'Give it to me!' he said.
Mary Beth pushed Vernon Smothers away from her.
'Down on the ground, on your face! Do it, both of you, now!' she said to Sammy and the man in the ponytail.
Then she saw Sammy lunge toward his friend and try to pull a.25-caliber automatic from a small holster inside the friend's coat. She swung the baton again, this time across the side of Sammy's face, and shattered his jaw. It hung locked in place, lopsided, blood that was absolutely scarlet issuing off his tongue. His glasses lay broken on the grass.
Sammy collapsed to his knees, then grabbed at her legs and at the nine-millimeter on her hip, while the man in the ponytail at first pushed her, then watched stupidly as his.25 automatic fell from its holster into Sammy's lap.
The man in the ponytail tried to disentangle himself and back away while Sammy pulled the trigger impotently on the automatic and fought to get the safety off.
Mary Beth gripped her nine-millimeter with both hands but fired high with the first shot at Sammy Mace and hit the man in the ponytail in the groin. He stumbled away, his face rearing into the sky, his hands clutched to the wound as though he wanted to relieve himself.
Her second round entered Sammy's eye socket and blew the back of his head out on the grass.
Suddenly there was no sound in the skeet club except the wind fluttering an American flag on top of the pavilion.
chapter twenty-five
It was hot that night, and still hot at false dawn, as though the air had been baked, then released again on the new day. I got a handful of molasses balls from the tack room and fed them to Beau in the lot, then turned him out and walked down to the river and watched the darkness go out of the sky. The current was dark green and swirling with froth from dead cottonwood trees that were snagged along the shore, and I could hear bream popping the surface where the riffle channeled under the tree trunks.