‘Glad to do it.’ I passed him a ten dollar bill. ‘You ever see that Mercury around here again?’
‘I’ve been looking! I see him, I’ll come over and tell you.’ I thanked him and wandered back to the truck.
We drove to a little village most maps didn’t bother naming and settled into a booth as far from the regulars as we could get. An old waitress came across the floor, smiling at Molly and me, ‘How are you folks this afternoon?’
We were fine. She commented on my eye, which really didn’t look too bad, and I told her my stepdaughter’s mare had popped me. When she asked what we wanted, I told her, ‘Longnecks,’ sounding, I expect, like Walt himself, ‘and keep them coming.’
‘We got plenty of those!’
‘That’s good,’ I told her, ‘because we’re thirsty.’
‘You okay?’ Molly asked.
I shook my head, watching the old waitress at her business. ‘Tired.’
‘You didn’t get any sleep last night.’
That wasn’t it, and we both knew it. Our beers came, and after a toast to catastrophe that was half fun and half tradition, Molly said, ‘You know what attracted me to you the first time we met?’
I swore. Then I laughed. ‘I always figured it was the beer you had before I got there.’
‘You weren’t afraid.’
‘Of what?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Of anything. What people thought, what they could do to you, the future, the past: you were doing what you wanted and you intended to keep on doing it.’
I considered telling her that graduate school is a peculiar time in a person’s life. You’re always broke, you’re always chasing after something you can’t quite catch, and you’re young. You’re not howling-at-the-moon-young. You’re one step from respectability, and in that last mad dance of irresponsibility you are what you will never be again. Instead, I told her, ‘It was a long time ago, those first nights, Molly.’
‘And days. Remember the rainy afternoons? I never had such…’
‘What?’
Molly blushed and laughed. ‘Such orgasms.’
I howled, and every head and the bar turned to watch us. While I had everyone’s attention, I called out to the bartender, ‘You want to set everyone up with a fresh drink? He nodded and went to work. A couple of old codgers tipped their glasses at us, letting me know it was okay with them if I wanted to howl now and then.
‘You know he’s going to come for you now?’ she said.
I lost my smile and nodded. I knew.
We got home after dark, still reasonably coherent. We had thirteen messages, and I ran through them quickly. The seventh was Kip Dalton. I called his cell phone number.
‘I’d like to ask you a favour,’ Dalton said after I identified myself.
‘I missed seeing you the other day, Detective.’
‘Something came up.’
‘I’m shooting straight with you, Detective. I expect the same in return.’
After a moment of uncomfortable silence Dalton told me, ‘The sheriff wanted to try a different approach.’
It wasn’t exactly an apology, but I let it pass. ‘What’s your favour?’
‘We want to search your farm. I’d like to do it without asking for a search warrant.’
‘Why is that?’
Kip Dalton chuckled pleasantly. ‘For one thing because Newsome and Jacobs said you won’t go for it.’
‘I’ll make you a deal. You bring everybody and their Aunt Mabel on out tomorrow. You can look anywhere you want as long as those two stay off the property.’
Kip Dalton laughed. ‘Fair enough, but I think you ought to know their feelings are going to be hurt!’
What he meant by that was they would be the ones who arrested me when the time came.
Molly asked me about getting a lawyer once I told her what Kip wanted. I shook my head. ‘They have enough evidence to get a search warrant. There’s nothing a lawyer can do at this point.’
‘And if they find something?’
‘There’s nothing here to find.’
Molly wasn’t so confident. ‘You’re sure?’ she asked.
I hesitated, then I smiled. ‘I will be after tomorrow.’
They came early the next day and kicked around in our stuff using twenty officers and two dogs. They took a variety of items for testing with my permission, naturally, including my hair and blood and Molly’s. 22 Magnum, but they took nothing we did not recognize. When they were gone I think we both felt exhausted, though we had done practically nothing all day. I suggested a horseback ride, the fresh air would do us good, but Molly wanted to fix herself a drink and call Lucy. I kicked around in the office until she was off the phone. On something of a whim I called the university’s lawyer, hoping I could stir something up. He played hard-to-get, and we didn’t actually speak to each other until five o’clock, nearly two hours after my first attempt to call him. ‘The reason I called,’ I said, ‘I’m interested in negotiating a severance package.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I need three years’ salary and benefits. In exchange for that, I’ll agree not to bring suit against the university.’
The university lawyer didn’t sound especially impressed, but he told me he would pass the offer on to the president.
I had been told to go to hell quite a few times in my life but never quite with such dispassionate sweetness. ‘While you’re passing things on to him,’ I said, ‘you might want to let him know Denise Conway is going to tell the court that her ex-boyfriend stole her diary and handed a copy of it over to the university as evidence without her permission.’
The lawyer’s silence hadn’t a bit of condescension about it.
‘That’s the bad news,’ I said. ‘The really bad news is she’s prepared to declare under oath her diary was nothing more than a fantasy and that she never said it was anything else.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Could be,’ I said. ‘Then again, you haven’t asked her, have you? Seems to me you might want to interview Ms Conway yourself before you commit yourself to a litigation that could cost you a hell of a lot more than three years’ salary.’
The lawyer told me he would get back with me.
Roger Beery showed up the following evening.
Once I recognized Walt’s Volvo, I went to the den where I kept the shotguns in a locked case. Grabbing the twelve-gauge and slipping half-a-dozen shells into it as I went, I headed out the backdoor with Molly right behind me.
We got to the driveway just as Roger was getting out of his father’s car. I put my shotgun to my shoulder and pointed it at him.
‘What’s that for, Dave?’
‘Get off our property before I shoot you,’ I shouted.
‘Jeez, that’s real friendly.’
I fired into his windshield, and Roger jumped away from his car in stark terror.
‘Next one’s for you, fat boy,’ I said, keeping the gun trained on him. ‘Now get out. I’m not going to ask you again.’
‘I’ve got something you might want to look at. I just want to give it to you and then I’ll take off.’
‘Try the mail.’
Roger was holding a DVD in his gloved hand and stooped down gingerly to leave it on the ground for us. ‘How about I put it here. You’re going to want to see this.’ He looked at Molly. ‘Both of you.’
‘What is it?’ Molly asked.
‘Just look at it. I’ll call you tomorrow about what it’s going to cost you to keep it off the internet.’
With that he backed away and got in his car. I kept my gun trained on him as he circled us and drove away.
Molly went for the DVD case, swearing hotly as she picked it up. ‘What do you think it is?’ she asked.
‘Let’s go find out.’
Inside the house, we took our coats off and headed for the living room. Neither of us spoke. I still had the shotgun in my hand, but I wasn’t looking for Buddy Elder when he stepped out of the den.
Buddy jacked a shell into the chamber of my four-ten and brought it to his shoulder. I had the better weapon, but Buddy was pointing his at Molly’s head.
His eyes blackened, his nose broken, Buddy hardly looked like the congenial grad student I had met at Caleb’s eight months earlier. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to put the gun down, Dave.’