When Jake told her that he would protect her from Carpin, if she’d only get in the closet as he’d said, Julie demurred. Instead she wracked Jake up pretty good with a well-placed kick that took him down to the floor. She left him there, holding himself and leaking spittle. Then she grabbed the physician’s bag with the latest Oklahoma City payoff, and started looking for Jessica. Something had gone wrong. Archie was not supposed to have awakened until late that night. She had been counting on that and the hospital’s propensity to keep him for observation and monitoring of his vital signs while she got everything ready and made her break.
She went to Jessica’s room to fetch the girl, but she was gone. With one look out the window from the main house Julie found her. She was down past the horse stables, as always, and playing in the rain.
Julie took the bag and her purse and high-tailed it down the lane toward the stables.
By the time she had Jessica by the hand she saw the glow of headlights coming over the hill past the house. Archie Carpin was home.
The stables were deserted, except for the men down in the still. But there was nowhere to run.
Her eyes settled on the manure pile and on the concrete cylinder rising just inches above the refuse.
She ran to the manure pile, stepped shin-deep into the manure and gave the rusting lid a shove. It didn’t move. She looked around. There was a manure shovel close by, leaning up against a mesquite tree. She grabbed it, took careful aim on the ancient lock and brought the shovel down on top of it with all she had.
The lock and the hasp shattered.
She gave the lid a second push. This time it opened with a screech of metal on concrete.
She dropped the bag into the blackness of the shaft, pulled the lid closed, took Jessica by the hand and made for the barbed wire fence and the woods beyond.
And they made it.
They spent the night in a hunter’s blind deep in the woods, shivering and shaking and starting at every sound.
The next day they cut across country, hiking until they found a road. From there they thumbed a ride into town.
Later that next evening, Julie put the kid on a bus to her real grandmother’s house in New York City, paying for the fare in cash. She’d had the presence of mind to take one stack of bills and stuff them into her purse the night before. And by the time she met me, all she’d had left were three pathetic-looking hundred dollar bills.
She ran from Childress, Texas, and into the arms of Carpin’s chief enemy, Ernest Neil, a hundred miles east of Austin.
Jake and Freddie tracked her there and Jake killed Ernest Neil with a bullet to the head at three-hundred yards. It was impossible to know whether or not he’d been aiming at Julie or at Ernest. I had it figured that in the moment he had her lovely head and face in the cross-hairs of his sniper-rifle, Jake couldn’t bring himself to do it. Whether from misplaced affection, unrequited, or from anger, I believe he moved the cross-hairs a few hundredths of a degree, took careful aim at Ernest Neil, and fired.
When she was finished with her story, she sat there for a time, drying her eyes.
I picked up Jessica and set her down on the bed next to Julie. She was a darling kid and her eyes seemed to watch my every move.
“You watch out for her, will ya, kiddo?” I said. “I’ve got to check on Hank.”
“Okay,” she said, and smiled.
“Mom,” I heard her say as I walked around the curtain and across the floor. “Everything is gonna be great.”
“I know, honey,” Julie said.
I had been warned.
The doctor had said he might not wake up for some time. That he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
I was just sitting there in his room watching little green blips of light surf peaks and valleys, each peak accompanied by that damned sound that means the same thing in any language. I watched my friend’s heart beat. Watched him breathe.
I haven’t had many close friends in my life. I think exactly three. If that was true, then Hank was definitely one of them.
Two hours and just a little over, before he awoke.
I watched nurses pass by out in the Critical Care Ward. Then I heard a “hmm.”
It was Hank. He was looking at me. There was no telling how long he’d been watching me. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d looked up at his face. Really, I had had one hell of a night myself.
I stood up, walked over to him.
He tried to raise his hand toward me.
I took his hand in mine, two old buddies meeting after a long absence and just shaking hands.
“Don’t try to talk,” I told him. “You took one in the lungs.”
“Julie? The little girl?”
“They’re fine,” I said. “None the worse for wear.”
He shook his head.
“Dingo?” he asked.
“Hey. You don’t listen, do you? You’re supposed to shut up.” I suppose the relief on my face was not enough to discourage him.
“Tell me,” he rasped.
“Dingo’s gonna be fine. She’s at a veterinary clinic down the block. Feds took her there. She took a bullet through the neck, but she’ll live. Her bark will never be the same, though.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Either one of us.” His voice was a breathy wheeze, like a teakettle that was trying to come to a boil. He coughed once, softly. It was a weak cough, but it was a sound that I didn’t like.
“Easy, Cowboy,” I said. “Don’t you ever shut up?”
His eyes were on mine. “I’m gonna be fine,” he said. “But… I do have to tell you-”
“What?”
“McMurray.”
“Oh,” I said.
Hank nodded.
“The IRS guy. Hank, you don’t have to tell me,” I said. “Maybe it’s better if you don’t anyway. To tell the truth, I don’t think I can stand the thought of you going from a hospital to a jail.”
“I’m… too old, I think,” he said, his voice hardly better than a rasp.
“There’s no such thing as too old for prison.”
He waved a weakened hand. My turn to shut up.
“You don’t understand,” he said softly. “It was… self-defense.”
“Why would an IRS agent try to harm you?” I realized the stupidity of the question the moment it tumbled out of my mouth. “I mean physically,” I said.
“You might, too, if I had the goods on you the way I did… on him.”
Things clicked into place in my head.
“Um,” I began.
“Yeah,” he said. “Remember? I was about three million up in unpaid taxes. Even after everything settled down I had to pay in a third of that.”
“I remember,” I said.
“McMurray was the only agent who knew about it. He wanted his share… And a plane ticket to South America.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I got his demand on tape. He came after me.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“‘S truth,” he said. “Remember, I disappeared for about four months. That was after. He cornered me…in the parking lot of a truck-stop in Killeen. Pulled a gun. I grabbed for it. Got a bullet through my shoulder, but not too bad. The next bullet… Murray ate.”
“Jesus, Hank,” I said. “What-I’m not sure I want to know this… But what did you do with the body?”
“Bottom of… Lake Belton. Wrapped a tow-chain around him. I let the bottom-feeders have him.”
“You still got that tape?”
“Yep,” he said. “Made copies. The original was in the glove-box of my Ford. I reckon the government has it now.”
I thought about it. We’d left Hank’s Ford Fairlane parked across the street from Julie’s demolished duplex, along with Dock’s dead body.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure they have it.”
“Yeah. It’s what Agents Bruce and Cranford didn’t mention. They’ll be asking about it soon.”
He coughed again, this time it didn’t sound good at all.