The two men came out running, but they pulled up short when Dacy lifted the Weatherby. Their attention swung confusedly from her to the burning ranch buildings to John T.’s station wagon. Both had the look of men dragged out of sleep: uncombed hair, pouched eyes, wearing nightshirts tucked haphazardly into their jeans.
Hanratty said, “What’s going on here, Dacy?”
“What does it look like?”
“You set that fire?”
“No. You?”
“Hell no. What’s the idea throwing down on us?”
“Somebody set it. That’s the idea.”
“If we’d wanted to burn this fucking place, we’d’ve done it long ago. We don’t know any more’n you do. I got up to take a leak, spotted the fireglow, and rousted Tom.”
“Just Tom?”
“Wasn’t any sense trying to wake up Mrs. Roebuck.”
Spears said, “How long’s John T. been here?”
“Long before we came.”
“Chrissake, he didn’t torch the place, did he?”
“We don’t know who did it.”
“Well, where’s he at? John T.?”
From down in the hollow there was a thunderous rumble that turned their heads: The barn’s roof had collapsed in a fountain of sparks and embers. Waves of heat rolled over them, driven by wind gusts. Sweat prickled Messenger’s neck, flowed down from his armpits. The smoke-heavy air was raw in his lungs.
He said, “John T.’s in his car. He came up here to meet somebody, the way it looks.”
“Meet who, this time of night?”
Hanratty said, “Why don’t somebody ask him? Why ain’t he over here by now?”
“Go take a look.”
The cowhands exchanged a glance. Messenger watched them approach the station wagon; Hanratty opened the door. Their shocked reactions seemed genuine; Spears’s “Shit!” was explosive. When they came back to the Jeep Hanratty looked shaken and angry, Spears stunned.
“We found him like that,” Dacy told them, “five minutes before you got here.”
Spears said, “Who’d do that to John T.?” in a sick voice.
“This bugger, for one.” Hanratty had stepped close to Messenger, “By Christ, if you had anything to do with it—!”
“He didn’t,” Dacy said. “Jim was at my place all day and all evening.”
“You with him the whole time?”
“Most of it.”
“He could’ve snuck out after you went to bed—”
“No. We were together until after midnight.”
“Yeah? Doing what, so late?”
“Talking, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Talking. Bet you were.”
Messenger glanced at Lonnie. The boy didn’t seem to be listening; he stood jut-necked again, either lost inside himself or fixated on the blazing skeletons below.
“You go to sleep easy every night, Joe?” Dacy asked coldly. “Sleep like a baby every night?”
Spears said, “What’s the matter with you two? Jesus Christ, John T.’s lying over there dead with his face blowed off. Ain’t anybody gonna do something?”
“He’s right,” Messenger said, “the sheriff has to be notified. Mrs. Roebuck, too.”
“I don’t want no part of that job.”
“We’ll go down and do it,” Dacy said. “You and Joe stay here and keep watch until Ben Espinosa comes. All right?”
“No, it ain’t all right,” Hanratty said. “But I guess we got no choice.” He moved even closer to Messenger and did his chest-poking number again. “John T. was a good man, twice the man you are, city boy. Maybe you didn’t shoot him, but I’ll tell you one thing, sure. He’s dead on account of you. One way or another, no matter who done it, he’s dead because you brought your sorry ass to Beulah.”
Messenger kept silent. There was no point in arguing: Hanratty was right.
The Roebuck ranch seemed smaller up close than it did from a distance. Even so, there were twice as many buildings as Dacy managed — two barns, two trailers, a long structure that was probably a bunkhouse, several sheds, an old soddy that might have been the original home of John T.’s father and preserved for that reason. Plus a number of tumbledown ricks and a maze of corrals and cattle-loading chutes. The main ranch house was of native stone and shaded by geometric rows of cottonwoods, but it wasn’t much larger than Dacy’s.
The house remained dark as she piloted the Jeep across the floodlit yard. In front she switched off engine and lights, told Lonnie to stay put, and she and Messenger went to the door. He banged an old-fashioned horseshoe knocker; the thudding noise it made echoed like a thunderclap. But it produced no response. He had to use the knocker half a dozen times, with increasing force, before a light finally went on inside.
When Lizbeth Roebuck opened the door, Messenger thought immediately that she’d been hard to wake because she was passed out drunk. Bleary-eyed, puffy-cheeked, the smell of stale bourbon on her breath and leaking from her pores; sexless and sagging inside a blue chenille bathrobe. Steady enough on her feet, though — the carefully cultivated balance of the habitual alcoholic.
She focused on Dacy and said, “So it’s you. What’s the idea making so much noise?” Her husky voice was almost a growl, but you had to listen close to hear the slur in it.
“Something’s happened, Liz. We need to come in.”
“You know what time it is?”
“It’s important. Talk to you and use your phone.”
“Phone? What for?”
“Call the sheriff.”
“Sheriff,” she said. She backed up, slowly, to let them enter. “What happened?”
“It’s bad, Liz. You’d better sit down.”
“Hell with that. Tell me.”
“No way to say it except straight out. John T.’s dead.”
No reaction, not even the flicker of an eyelid.
“Lizbeth? I said John T.’s dead.”
“I heard you. How?”
“Somebody set fire to Anna’s ranch. Burned everything that was left. Maybe John T., maybe not — but he was there. Still is. Whoever else was there shot him inside his station wagon.”
Still no reaction. Messenger remembered Dacy telling him Lizbeth Roebuck was a cold fish. Could be that was the reason, or it could be shock. The other possibility was that the news of her husband’s death wasn’t news to her.
A stretch of silence; then she said, “Phone’s in the kitchen,” and went slowly to a red leather wet bar that dominated one wall. Neither Dacy nor Messenger moved. Lizbeth poured a tumbler three-quarters full of sour-mash bourbon and drank it slowly, steadily, pausing for air only once, until the glass was empty. She set it down and then stood as she had before, rigid, expressionless. “Well?” she said to Dacy. “I told you where the phone is. Go make your call.”
“I will.”
“But first, get him out of here.” She wasn’t looking at Messenger; she hadn’t looked at him the entire time. “I don’t want that bastard in my house.”
“Jim didn’t have anything to do with—”
“Get him out. Tell him get the fuck out right now.”
Dacy said, “Jim...”
He nodded. “I’ll be with Lonnie.”
Lizbeth Roebuck was still talking to Dacy, saying, “Out, out, get him the fuck out of my house,” when he opened the door and went outside.
The wind had died again; the hush over the ranch yard and buildings had a layered quality, like the hushes he was used to on foggy nights in San Francisco. The sky above the hills to the north was still flushed and smoke-stained, but the red glow was fading and the smoke columns had thinned and shortened. By the time Ben Espinosa arrived, the fire would be mostly spent and there’d be nothing left of Anna’s ranch except charred wooden bones.