The Triggerman Dance

"No prints leading back down."

"None you found. Maybe he prowled around a bit, looking for me, then headed down another way."

"Then you did make it to the fence."

"I didn't see any fence."

"It's only eight feet high and six fuckin' miles long."

John did not stifle his yawn. "I had better things to think about. Besides, I'm unobservant, like you said."

"You sized up those bikers in Anza pretty quick, for being unobservant. So you don't notice the fence, but how'd you ever miss Snakey? Boot marks everywhere out there, Menden. Yours."

"Pit your hefty IQ against this one, Lane. Marks don't put us there at the same time, do they? I probably got there first, and Snakey probably watched me from a bush or something. That seems about like Snakey's speed—I can see him watching from a bush, hunkered right down in the middle of it like a big tick. When I left—which was after about twenty minutes—he came up and crabbed around and wandered back down the house some other way. There's enough brush and rocks and sandstone up there, he could pick a way down an Apache couldn't track."

John stood up and looked at his watch. "I hate to be rude and imply that you're wasting my time, but you are."

Fargo stared at John, all his reigned menance concentrated in his gleaming, recessive eyes. "I just saw Val on my way over. Looked kind of shook up. Hardly even looked at me. I don't like to see her that way. She'll see through you before very long. She's bright."

"What's she going to see, Lane?"

"I don't know, yet. And it frosts my balls not to know."

"Sorry to keep disappointing you. Keep trying and you'll be able to bust me for something, but it won't be for disappearing Snakey. By the way, I want my wallet, guns and truck keys back."

"Right here," he said, looking at the grocery bag. "Not the gun, though. Won't need it. Mr. Holt's orders."

"He tell you when to pee, too?"

"He'll tell me when I can bust your head."

"Bring help."

Fargo studied John again, his ugly little smile breaking mustache. "I don't think you appreciated that slap on the ear he gave you last week. I think you're just cool enough to pop a man for that if you could get away with it. You're ulterior."

John held out his hand toward the door, palm up. "Must get tiring, being wrong all the time."

"I hardly ever am, about people's characters. You and Adam getting kind of cozy? Touchy-feely through the e-mail?"

"Print them out and read them."

"Have."

"Happy trails, then."

"That's not a bad idea."

The door shut and John cursed himself for the stupid invitation. What if Fargo did go back up the trail and take another look around for Snakey?

He downed the beer and cracked another. He fed the dogs on the deck, then stood there for a while and watched them eat. He watched Fargo disappear into the rough packing plant that was his home. He felt the wind beginning to move in off the desert now, warm, dry and with a hint of the great power behind it.

In the shower his knees felt rickety, his hands shook and he felt again that something terrible was gaining on him.

His dreams were filled Rebecca and Valerie. Both women opened their mouths to talk but he couldn't hear their words. So he just took off, flying over them with a bed sheet stretched between his hands, riding the wind up off the earth and into dark heavens.

Chapter 37

By Saturday night the wind was strong. It folded the blades o: meadow grass and exposed their paler sides, washing Liberty Ridge with the astringent smell of the desert. John walked to ware the Big House. Holt had invited him to dinner, "big doings." He looked out at the ocean where a yellow sun sank toward bronze water. There were too many things to think about so he picked the most important: Don't rock the boat now. By noon tomorrow, you will be finished.

He was surprised to see the dining table set up on the expanse of lawn that fronted the Big House. A green-and-white striped canopy rocked in the wind, its rounded edges flapping against the poles. Two servers—Liberty Ops trainees, John guessed—moved across the lawn with large chafing dishes on wheeled carts. Behind them came Carolyn in her wheelchair, pushed strenuously across the grass by her evening nurse. He could see Laura and Thurmond Messinger standing at the wet bar with Lane Fargo and an older couple John had never seen before. Adam Sexton waved at him.

He crossed the lawn, stepped under the snapping canvas canopy and onto the parquet flooring, then headed toward the bar. Laura greeted him with a handshake and a peck on the cheek, surrounding John in a brief front of perfume. She had on a pair of jeans, a low-necked white blouse and a black jacket that showed off her ample front and ample suntan. Thurmond nodded to him over the rim of a cocktail glass, and extended his hand when his wife was finished. He was a balding man who wore the oversized black-framed eyeglasses John associated with eccentrics, clothing designers and old-time talent agents.