The Last of the Winnebagos

“Yes,” I said. “For the Winnebago story. How long will it take?”

“That depends. When do you plan to tell me why you ditched the governor’s conference? And Taliesin West. Jesus Maria, I’ll have to call the Republic and s they’ll trade footage. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to have shots of an extinct RV. That is, assuming you got any shots. You did make it out to the zoo, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I got vidcam footage, stills, the works. I even used the eisenstadt.”

“Mind sending your pictures in while I look up your old flame, or is that too much to ask? I don’t know how long this will take. It took me two days to get clearance on the Amblers. Do you want the whole thing—pictures, documentation?”

“No. Just a resume. And a phone number.”

She cut out, still not saying goodbye. If phones still had receivers, Ramirez would be a great one for hanging up on people. I highwired the vidcam footage and the eisenstadts in to the paper and then fed the eisenstadt cartridge into the developer. I was more than a little curious about what kind of pictures it would take, in spite of the fact that it was trying to do me out of a job.

At least it used high-res film and not some damn two hundred thousand-pixel TV substitute. I didn’t believe it could compose, and I doubted if the eisenstadt would be able to do foreground-background either, but it might, under certain circumstances, get a picture I couldn’t.

The doorbell rang. I answered the door. A lanky young man in a Hawaiian shirt and baggies was standing on the front step, and there was another man in a Society uniform out in the driveway.

“Mr. McCombe?” he said, extending a hand. “Jim Hunter. Humane Society.”

I don’t know what I’d expected—that they wouldn’t bother to trace the call? That they’d let somebody get away with leaving a dead animal on the road?

“I just wanted to stop by and thank you on behalf of the Society for phoning in that report on the jackal. Can I come in?”

He smiled, an open, friendly, smug smile, as if he expected me to be stupid enough to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and slam the screen door on his hand.

“Just doing my duty,” I said, smiling back at him.

“Well, we really appreciate responsible citizens like you. It makes our job a whole lot easier.” He pulled a folded readout from his shirt pocket. “I just need to double-check a couple of things. You’re a reporter for Sun-co, is that right?”

“Photo-journalist,” I said.

“And the Hitori you were driving belongs to the paper?”

I nodded.

“It has a phone. Why didn’t you use it to make the call?

The uniform was bending over the Hitori.

“I didn’t realize it had a phone. The paper just bought the Hitoris. This is only the second time I’ve had one out.”

Since they knew the paper had had phones put in, they also knew what I’d just told them. I wondered where they’d gotten the info. Public phones were supposed to be tap-free, and if they’d read the license number off one of the cameras, they wouldn’t know who’d had the car unless they’d talked to Ramirez, and if they’d talked to her, she wouldn’t have been talking blithely about the last thing she needed being trouble with the Society.

“You didn’t know the car had a phone,” he said, “so you drove to—” He consulted the readout, somehow giving the impression he was taking notes. I’d have bet there was a taper in the pocket of that shirt. “—The 7-Eleven at McDowell and Fortieth Street, and made the call from there. Why didn’t you give the Society rep your name and address?”

“I was in a hurry,” I said. “I had two assignments to cover before noon, the second out in Scottsdale.”

“Which is why you didn’t render assistance to the animal either. Because you were in a hurry.”

You bastard, I thought. “No,” I said. “I didn’t render assistance because there wasn’t any assistance to be rendered. The—it was dead.”

“And how did you know that, Mr. McCombe?”

“There was blood coming out of its mouth,” I said.

I had thought that that was a good sign, that he wasn’t bleeding anywhere else. The blood had come out of Aberfan’s mouth when he tried to lift his head, just a little trickle, sinking into the hard-packed snow. It had stopped before we even got him into the car. “It’s all right, boy,” I told him. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

Katie started the jeep, killed it, started it again, backed it up to where she could turn around.

Aberfan lay limply across my lap, his tail against the rar shift. “Just lie still, boy,” I said. I patted his neck, was wet, and I raised my hand and looked the palm, afraid it was blood. It was only water from the melted snow. I dried his neck and the top of his head with the sleeve of my sweater.

“How far is it?” Katie said. She was clutching the steering wheel with both hands and sitting stiffly forward in the seat. The windshield wipers flipped back and forth, trying to keep up with the snow.

“About five miles,” I said, and she stepped on the gas pedal and then let up on it again as we began to skid. “On the right side of the highway.”