Lonnie was sitting quietly in the Jeep, head tipped back, a lighted cigarette in one corner of his mouth. It was the first time Messenger had seen him using tobacco of any kind.
“She didn’t want me in her house,” he said as he climbed in on the passenger side. “Mrs. Roebuck.”
“That surprise you?”
“No.”
“What’d she say about John T.?”
“Nothing. Whatever she feels, she didn’t say or show it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the way she is. Nobody knows what goes on inside her head.”
“How about you, Lonnie? What’s going on inside your head right now?”
“About John T.?” He drew on the cigarette without taking it from his mouth. “I didn’t much like him, you know that. But I hate it when anybody suffers or dies sudden — anybody or anything. I guess mostly how I feel is bad.”
“That’s how I feel, too.”
“Yeah? I figured you’d be happy.”
“Why would you figure that?”
“You think whoever shot John T. killed my uncle and Tess, that it’s all part of the same thing. Don’t you?”
“Don’t you, now?”
“No. Two separate things that don’t have anything to do with each other.”
“Lonnie... when we first got to the fire you started to say something about your uncle. ‘What my uncle did—’ You remember that?”
“I remember.”
“Finish the sentence. What did he do that makes you hate him so much?”
Messenger thought he wasn’t going to get an answer. But then, as Lonnie flicked away what remained of his cigarette, “You know what he did.”
“No, I don’t.”
“All the women he cheated with.”
“That isn’t it.”
“How do you know it isn’t? You don’t know anything.”
“What did he do, Lonnie?”
“No, goddamn it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You do want to talk about it. It’s half choking you, and if you don’t spit it out pretty soon you’ll strangle on it. I know; I keep things locked up inside me, too.”
Another silence, shorter this time. “I can’t tell you,” Lonnie said. “I couldn’t even tell Ma.”
“Sometimes it’s easier for a man to talk to another man. Even one he hasn’t known for long.”
“I can’t. I just... can’t.”
“All right. But if you change your mind...”
They sat in the quiet dark, Messenger unmoving, Lonnie restlessly shifting position, lighting another cigarette and then discarding it after two drags. A voice rose from inside the house — Lizbeth Roebuck’s, making some kind of drunken protest that didn’t last long. The smoky fireglow died away behind the hills, leaving the sky clean again. The immense canopy of stars seemed even brighter, not quite real, like a heavenly map in a planetarium.
And Lonnie said suddenly, as if the words were being torn out of him, “He messed with her.”
“... Say that again?”
“My uncle. Tess. He messed with her.”
“Sexually abused her?”
“I don’t know if he... you know. But he touched her, played around with her. More than once.”
Jesus. “How do you know, Lonnie? Did you see him touch her?”
“No. She told me.”
“When?”
“Not long before she was killed. A few days.” The words came spilling out of him now, a purge like the emptying of a pus pocket. His voice was heavy with anguish. “She used to like to be tickled, it was a game we all played with her. I was in the barn at our place forking hay and she came in — they were down visiting that day — she came in and I started tickling her. She said, ‘Stop it, stop it!’ and then she started to bawl. She didn’t want to tell me but I got it out of her. I didn’t want to believe it but it was the truth, she wasn’t making it up.”
“What did you do then?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to break his fucking head — that’s what I should have done. Instead I told Tess... I said she...”
“You told her to tell her mother.”
“Yeah. Tell her mother. Because I didn’t want to do it myself.”
“You did the right thing. Better for it to come from her.”
“That’s what I thought. I thought my aunt’d believe her easier than she would me. I made Tess promise she’d tell. I made her promise...”
“You think she did tell,” Messenger said. “You think that’s the reason your aunt went crazy and killed them both.”
“She must’ve blamed Tess as much as him. But it wasn’t Tess’s fault. Him, it was his fault. And mine.”
“No, Lonnie—”
“Mine. That’s why I couldn’t tell Ma or anyone afterward. It’s my fault Tess is dead!”
21
It was the heat that finally woke him. The interior of the Air-stream trailer was like a sauna: He lay marinating in his own sweat, the sheets sodden and tangled around him. What time was it? The sun must be high already for it to be so hot in here...
He rolled over, fumbling for his wristwatch. Almost eleven. That late? Dacy must have gotten up by now; why hadn’t she called him? Get moving, he thought, there’s work to do. But he couldn’t seem to make his body respond. He felt logy, desensitized: not enough sleep, and the few hours he’d had had been too shallow and exhausted to be restful. Almost dawn before Sheriff Espinosa had allowed them to leave the Roebuck ranch, and another hour after that before he’d been able to drift deeper than a fitful doze.
He lay listening to the hot silence. As sweat-soaked as the bedclothes were, he could still smell Dacy’s scent on the sheets and pillowcase. That part of last night was clear in his memory: their lovemaking, everything they’d said to each other. But most of the rest had a blurred quality, like a poor black-and-white film print. In particular the scenes involving Espinosa’s endless questions, and the long, pointless drive back to Anna’s ranch that he’d made them take with him. The baked apple had been antagonistic enough toward him, though he’d seemed more bemused than anything by John T.’s death: a man who had suddenly lost his leader and didn’t quite know how to handle the situation. If it hadn’t been for the presence of Dacy and Lonnie, Espinosa’s hostility would have had a sharper focus and Jim Messenger might well have spent a rough night in a jail cell. He was the only person the sheriff could conceive of who had a motive for murdering another Roebuck.
The only other parts of the night that were clear to him were the image of John T.’s bloodied corpse, and Lonnie’s revelation. There’d been no time at John T.’s ranch to think about what Lonnie had told him, to sort out its implications and possibilities; Dacy had come out of the house right afterward, and not long after that Espinosa and his two deputies arrived. No time to work on it now, either. He was too dull-witted from sleep and the trapped heat.
He rested another couple of minutes, then dragged himself off the rollaway and into the tiny shower stall. The tepid water woke him up a little more. By the time he’d brushed his teeth, run a comb through his hair, and dressed, he was in a functioning state again.
As soon as he stepped out of the trailer he saw Dacy. She was standing in the yard, facing out toward the valley road; and she clutched her rifle by its barrel, the butt down in the dirt at her side. What had her attention was a small, loose bunching of half a dozen vehicles and twice that many men and women on the road just beyond her gate. Like a ragtag encampment, he thought, that had sprung up overnight.
She heard him approaching and swiveled her head. “There you are. I was fixing to go pound on the door.”
“You should have. I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”
“Well, it was a long damn night.”