Dacy cut the wheel hard to the right to avoid a collision. The Jeep bounced up over a high curb, rattled down with a jolt that nearly caused her to lose control. Something bulked up large in front of them; he yelled a warning, but Dacy was already jamming on the brakes. If he hadn’t had his seat belt fastened and his body braced, he would have gone through the windshield or right up over it when the Jeep shuddered to a dead-engine stop. Closed Chevron station, he realized then. They were on the apron, nose up to one of the pumps on an outer island.
Hanratty had gone on past but now he was reversing, fast off the highway and in onto the apron at a sliding angle twenty yards away. Dacy was out and running by then. She yanked the Blazer’s door open, caught hold of Hanratty’s shirt, and all but dragged him out.
“You crazy drunken fool!” she yelled with her face inches from his. “You could’ve killed us!”
He swatted her hand loose. Then, as Spears came around from the passenger side and Messenger ran up, Hanratty swatted her — a backhanded blow that knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling.
Messenger hit him in retaliation. Didn’t plan it, didn’t have time to think about it, just swung in sudden fury as soon as he saw Dacy go down. His fist caught Hanratty on the side of the head; pain erupted in his knuckles as the big man stumbled back against the Blazer. But Hanratty wasn’t hurt. He caromed off, bellowing, and bull-charged Messenger, wrapped powerful arms around him.
Their feet got tangled together and they collapsed in a clawing embrace, Hanratty on top when they landed; his weight and impact with the asphalt drove most of the air from Messenger’s lungs. Gasping, he flailed with arms and legs, managed to free himself and pull away. He got his feet under him and lurched upright.
A flat banging noise penetrated the blood-pound in his ears.
Another.
His vision was clouded; he blinked his eyes clear, looking for Dacy. She was over behind the four-by-four, unhurt and wearing an expression of cold rage, the short-barreled revolver in her hand. Spears stood motionless a few feet from her, staring at the back end of the Blazer. Hanratty had gained his feet, too and was shaking his head in angry disbelief. It seemed to Messenger that enough noise had been made to bring the law and half the town; he was surprised to see that the highway was still empty, the four of them alone in what was left of the desert twilight.
A loud hissing reached his ears. And he saw then that the four-by-four’s rear end was settling at a backward slant. Dacy had shot out both rear tires.
“What the hell’d you do that for?” Hanratty said to her. He took a step toward her.
“Stay put unless you want some of the same. I’m not kidding, Joe.”
Hanratty stopped, glowering.
“How about you, Tom?”
“Not me,” Spears said. “Wasn’t my idea to chase after you.”
“Goddamn it, Dacy, you’re gonna pay for them tires.”
“Sure I am. Just like you’ll pay for the damage to my Jeep.”
Blood dribbled down from a cut on Hanratty’s temple; he swiped at it distractedly, as if it were a bothersome fly. “Second time in two nights you throwed a gun on me,” he said. “I oughta take that one away from you.”
“Go ahead and try. I’ll send flowers.”
“Huh?”
“To your hospital room. Takes a while to get over a gunshot wound, Joe. I hear they’re real painful.”
“Kind of talk don’t scare me,” Hanratty said, but at some level it must have. Like Billy Draper earlier, he held his ground.
“Jim,” she said. “You all right?”
His knuckles throbbed, and his chest ached with the hiss and rattle of his breathing. But he said, “Not hurt.”
“Go get in the Jeep.”
He went immediately. Headlights had appeared on the highway: two cars, one passing in each direction at retarded speeds. But their gawking occupants wanted nothing to do with what was happening in the station. Both sets of lights had vanished when Dacy settled in beside him.
“Damn rednecks!” she said when they were back on the highway. She was still furious. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. You?”
“I’ve been hit harder. You handled yourself pretty well back there.”
“Did I? I haven’t been in a fight since grade school. Tell me something, Dacy. Would you have shot Hanratty if he’d come at you? Or Spears? Or Billy Draper earlier?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I’d like to know, one way or the other.”
“My daddy taught me to always finish what I start. That answer your question?”
“Yes.”
“Bother you?”
“No.”
“Good. Now suppose you finish what you started to tell me back there at the stoplight.”
24
It was full dark when they drove up onto the bluff top. This was supposed to be a place of sanctuary, but to Messenger the buildings and the blobs and spatters of light and color had a strangely uninviting aspect. Imagination, perhaps, tainted by the knowledge that had brought them here. Just the same it all seemed remote and empty, secretive, like an island floating in the evening sky above Beulah.
On the grounds there were amber night lights; in the parsonage, a white globe burned behind an unshaded kitchen window and a pale gold rectangle marked a bedroom or study; in the Church of the Holy Name low-wattage bulbs and possibly candlelight turned the stained-glass windows into religious scenes like those in old illuminated manuscripts. But all of the light was stationary, frozen in the windless, purple dark. Cold light, where it should have been warm: as cold as the metallic silver dusting of stars overhead. The splashes of white radiance from the Jeep’s headlamps was all that moved as they jounced across the parking area; and when Dacy halted near the church entrance, the beams too became solid and cold.
She switched off lights and engine. Silence folded around them, a thick hush; but almost immediately sounds came out of the shadows that stretched away behind the church. Messenger stiffened with one leg out of the Jeep; Dacy reached over to grip his arm. The sounds continued almost rhythmically: chunking thuds and hollow scrapings. Metal on earth.
Somebody was digging in the cemetery.
He finished his exit and stood waiting, rubbing his still-sore knuckles. When Dacy joined him he saw by the starshine that she’d drawn her revolver. He said, “You won’t need that.”
“Probably not, but I’ll feel better with it handy.”
“Don’t show it unless you have to. Keep it out of sight.”
“Okay.” She tucked the weapon back under her shirttails, but she kept her hand on the butt.
He led the way along the church’s south wall. At the rear, near where the sand-pitted marble angel bulked grotesquely above the Roebuck plot, they paused to probe the shadows. Fifty yards distant, under one of the cottonwoods, a lone figure stood just below ground level, wielding what in drawn-back silhouette he recognized as a pick. Chunking thud as the tool smacked down, hollow scraping as its pronged head dragged through loose earth. Back up again, poised. And back down.
They approached slowly, not making noise to announce their presence but not being stealthy either. The digging went on unabated. They stopped once more, a few feet away. The hole under the tree was more than a foot deep and roughly rectangular in shape — obviously a grave. No surprise in that, and none in the identity of the person swinging the pick. From the moment he’d heard the digging sounds he’d known who was making them.