Anyway, I knew I wouldn’t be able to lie to those cop eyes. Besides, I needed to tell somebody. Unload. So I started the story at the beginning with losing Luke Jordan’s body. She didn’t seem surprised to hear about me and Molly, and I figured it didn’t really need to be a secret no more anyway since Doris had run off. I told her about the truck full of Mexicans and putting an axe through Billy’s neck and my upside down Nova. I told her about Roy’s big-rig and the hole I put in the Mona Lisa Motel. I told her about my son.
I felt exhausted by the end, put a cigarette in my mouth.
“You’re not supposed to smoke in the stationhouse,” Amanda said.
The look on my face must’ve been the saddest thing in the world because she rolled her eyes and said, “Go ahead then.”
I smiled a weak thank you at her and puffed one to life.
“Where’s the chief?”
I frowned. “I got a bad feeling he’s dead.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He went out to the Jordan’s place and that was the last anyone heard of him.”
“You think the Jordans are part of the smuggling?”
I nodded, puffed.
Doc Gordon came up behind us, cleared his throat for our attention. He wore an undershirt and pajama bottoms and carried a black doctor’s back. The pajama bottoms were green and covered with fish. He was in his late fifties and stooped, hair gone completely white. Round, thick glasses. He looked like a man who didn’t want to be awake.
“How is he?” Amanda asked.
“I cleaned him up,” Gordon said. “And I gave him a shot for pain, so he’s sleeping. Bleeding stopped. I got a bandage on him. He’ll need to get over to county, so somebody can pry the bullet out, but he’ll be fine for a while.”
“Thanks, Doc. Send the bill to the town council like usual, okay?”
“Them? They don’t get around to paying bills very fast. But there’s no hurry, I guess. What happened?”
“Part of an ongoing investigation.”
The doc waved that away like he was swatting a fly. “I can take a hint. Fine then. I’ll be back in the morning to change his dressing.” He left grumbling, but that was just Doc Gordon’s way. He wasn’t happy if he wasn’t grousing about something or other.
I looked at Amanda. “Now what?”
“Now we call in some help. We’ve got to find the Jordan brothers and the chief, and we’ve got a crapload of illegal aliens running helter-skelter all over the county.” She picked up the phone.
“That won’t work.”
She put the phone to her ear, frowned. “I thought it was just my phone.”
“Nope. I was thinking the main junction box.” “You think something happened to it?”
“Or somebody.”
“Damn. This place needs a cell phone tower.”
She unlocked the cuffs. “I’m going to level with you, Toby. You’re probably going to come out okay with Billy. It was self defense. I don’t know what they’re going to say about all the other stuff. You can’t just let a bunch of illegals loose on a town, and you sure as hell can’t crash a truck into a motel. But I need you right now to stay here and watch these two. I’m going to check the juncture box. Stay by the radio, okay? I’m taking the number two squad car.” She handed me Karl’s Glock. “Just sit tight and stay out of trouble.”
“Right.”
“Where is the junction box?”
“Across the street from the sewage plant pump house. They clustered all the utilities in one place.”
She paused in the doorway, looked at me with her cop eyes one more time. “Stay here.”
“I’m not going to do anything more ambitious than smoke this cigarette.”
And then she was gone.
I sat there and smoked the cigarette all the way down, then dropped the butt into Billy’s mug. The butt hissed out in the cold coffee. Karl snored lightly from his cell.
“Cowboy,” the hellcat whispered from her cell. “Talk to me.”
I sank in my chair, put my feet up on the desk. “What about?”
“What would it take to get me out of this cell?”
“A stick of dynamite.”
“Look at me, cowboy.”
I looked.
With thumb and forefinger she tugged the hem of her dress over her knees, showing a taste of thigh. “A girl like me can do special things for you, make you feel like you’ve never felt before.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Money, then. I can give you more than you’ll make on cop pay in ten years.”
“Lady, how about shutting up for a while?”
Surprisingly she did.
I let my chin hit my chest, closed my eyes. I could probably sleep for a week. I felt fatigue pull me slowly into a long, dark drop.
I was on stage in a honky-tonk. I thought I recognized the place, a sawdust-on-the-floor shithole just south of Lubbock. I was playing along with some song I didn’t recognize, trying to make the chords, but my fingers couldn’t hold the strings down. The strings bit into my fingers, and I jerked my hand away. I wiped the blood on my shirt, saw I was wearing the khaki deputy shirt. I’d wiped blood on the star, and when I tried to wipe it off I just wiped more on.
The drummer yelled “keep playing” at me. I looked at him. The drummer was Billy, blood leaking over his face from the huge gash in his forehead. I tried to climb down from the stage, but the crowd kept pushing me back.
I heard a woman call my name. The voice sounded familiar but fuzzy. I looked around but didn’t see her. There was no way to get off the stage. I felt urgently that I needed to get down, the crowd looking at me, the guitar a useless thing in my hands.
“Toby!”
I kept looking for the source of the voice calling to me. “Toby!”
I opened—
—my eyes.
“Toby!” Amanda’s voice squawked from the radio.
I shook the cobwebs out and grabbed the microphone. “I’m here.”
She said, “Listen, somebody’s done a number on this junction box. Looks like they’ve ripped out half the wires.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The state police are an hour away,” Amanda said. “I’m going to drive up to the Texaco and put in a call and come right back. Can you hold down the fort until then?”
“No problem. Be careful.”
“See you soon. Over and out.”
Amanda was being optimistic. The drive from the state police barracks at Morrisonville was an hour, but she’d have to explain what she needed on the phone first. Then they’d hem and haw and get their ducks in a row. Plus Amanda needed to get to a working phone at the Texaco.
I guessed a good two hours. If we were lucky.
After the weird dream, the idea of sleeping suddenly didn’t appeal. I took Karl’s Glock and my own .38 and the hellcat’s automatic and laid them out on the desk, lined them up by size in descending order. I went to the back room and came back with the cleaning kit and went to work on the guns. I started with mine. Karl’s was already spotless. The little automatic was such a piece of shit, it wasn’t worth cleaning, but I did it anyway.
I reloaded the .38, holstered it.
If I hadn’t been so damn tired, the knock on the door might have startled me. As it was, I merely turned toward the front door lazily and squinted, wondering who it might have been this time of night, hoping it wasn’t some damn crisis.
Hell, it was the police station after all. Maybe it was even a legit emergency.
“Come in,” I called.
Wayne Dobbs stuck his head through the door, took off his hat. He seemed embarrassed to be at the police station.
“Come on in, Wayne. It’s okay.”
He came in. “I tried to call, but my phone was on the fritz.”