After a pause, Kelton cursed and broke off.
In the house, on Lucas's cell phone, Jana North was leaving a message at the same time. "Lucas…I tried Dr. Sanger's cell and now I'm trying you. There's been an unusual shooting at a cafe in the Spring Brook area, not far from the Waller County line and the farm we raided. Four dead, two civilians, two state troopers. Looks like a hell of a firefight, but the troopers only got off one round. And, Lucas, a silver-gray BMW was seen leaving the scene."
A groundskeeper who came in and did the landscaping once a month arrived, pulling in alongside Lucas's unmarked squad car. He regarded the car as something unusual, and seeing the house had been opened, he guessed one or more of the family had come up from Houston for the weekend. Surveying the stables, he saw Dr. Sanger and a guest waiting for a pair of fine-looking, eager horses to be saddled up. Howard Kemper wondered at the injustice in the world, that some people had all this freaking free time and lavishness in their lives, while he had played the Texas and Louisiana lotteries religiously for the past ten years, to win the occasional fifty or a hundred bucks.
He shook his head, climbed up on the back of his truck, sat on the lawn mower, and turned the ignition key. He drove it down the ramp and out onto the thick grass, where he began the chore he would normally have completed by now if circumstances in his life hadn't gotten so hectic this morning. Riding high on the mower, Kemper thought he saw something shiny and reflective off in the trees down by the lake. When he looked again, it was gone, whatever it was. Likely just the way the sun had spanked the surface of the lake right now, he guessed. Damn beautiful lake, and unless you were native to the area, you'd never guess it a man-made lake.
After a moment of feeling odd, as if someone were watching him, Howard began cutting grass in earnest, and whenever he did so, his complete attention went to the job. He and his machine became one; for Howard, it was a kind of Zen thing, cutting grass.
In what other profession could a potbellied, middle- aged man with no education or desire for one, with a pickup and the right tools, make a living riding around on his rump, enjoying the sun, the fresh air, the view, the squirrels, and the birds in the trees? The Zen of Lawn Maintenance. He thought it'd make a great book title and a bundle of money, a book like that, but he wondered how he could get it written. Mr. Brody, across the lake, was rumored to have made his money writing paperback Westerns and suspense novels centering around a turn-of-the- century Sherlock Holmes type. He reportedly wrote two books a year-living off advances and royalties. Perhaps Brody'd be interested in co writing the lawn maintenance book if Howard proposed dictating it to him, but then Brody seemed pretty disinterested in his own damn lawn, leaving all decisions regarding that green nuisance, as he called it, to Howard's judgment. Brody claimed to hate grass and anything smacking of lawn work. How does any man ever cultivate such an attitude toward his own lawn? Kemper wondered.
CHAPTER 19
The horseback riding at an end, Lucas and Meredyth found themselves invited by the horse wranglers, brothers Jeff and Tommy Farnsworth, to dine on steaming-hot tamales, burritos, and Texas chili cooked up by the boys' mother. Lucas learned that they lived in a small house at the end of the property. They ate off the back of their pickup, the gun rack in the cab displaying a bolt-action Remington rifle that fired a,223-caliber bullet at high velocity. Lucas began talking guns with the young men, telling them of his handgun collection, and bragging that he owned a U.S. 7th Cavalry eight-shooter hanging on his wall at home, one which had been authenticated to have been taken off one of George Armstrong Custer's men by a Sioux warrior at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He left one brother fascinated, the other squinting and skeptical.
"Damn!" responded the younger brother, Tommy. "Could it be Custer's gun?"
"No, but it definitely belonged to one of his men."
Jeff skeptically said, "Custer fought the Sioux. How'd it get into your family?"
"Came down to my family in a horse trade. My grandfather recognized the value of the thing. He was a shrewd man."
The boys were duly impressed. "Sure would like to see it sometime." said Tommy. "Think next time you're out this way that you could bring it along?"
"Sounds like it ought to be housed in a museum," said Meredyth, "and not carted about like a baseball trading card."
"I keep it in a gun case, and I transport it in a gun box, not a cereal box, Mere."
Lucas wound up handling the Remington bolt action.223-caliber rifle, looking down its sight, testing its scope. "Do you know this thing is loaded?" he asked the brothers.
"Keep it handy for runnin' off the occasional coyote," said Jeff matter-of-factly.
"And sometimes, real, real early in the morning," added Tommy, "you get a fox messin' round the henhouse. Lost some good layin' hens to foxes. Really got Ma pissed off."
Lucas's large red hands caressed the length of the Remington, his eyes taking in its every line and feature. "Damned pretty weapon."
"It's good for two hundred and fifty freakin' yards," boasted Jeff.
"Bagged a lot of deer with her," added Tommy.
Meredyth had begun humming the tune to "Pretty Woman," and then began singing, "Pretty weapon…firing down the street… pretty weapon… the kind I'd like to meet…to clean one day… come what may…."
The men ignored her. "What do you carry when you're on duty, Lieutenant?" asked Jeff.
"A Police Special.38, Smith amp; Wesson on the ankle, but in my shoulder holster I carry a German-made Glock nine-millimeter semiautomatic."
"You got it on you now?"
"No, no. Left 'em up at the house, otherwise we'd get in some target shooting."
"Enough with the gunplay already," announced Meredyth, who then whispered, "Anyone would think you love your gun more than me."
"I hate to imagine what a good shrink might do with that," he replied, causing a snicker to erupt from Jeff. Tommy asked his big brother what was so funny.
Meredyth ignored Lucas's remark and said, "Are we or aren't we going fishing on the lake, Lucas?"
"Yeah, sure."
Jeff Famsworth replaced the Remington on the gun rack dangling across his rear window. Meredyth, looking off in the distance toward the lake, saw Howard Kemper puttering about on his lawn mower still. "Howard's working late," she muttered.
"Got a late start, 'bout an hour ago," said Jeff.
"What time is it?" she asked.
A glance at his watch told Lucas it was nearing six P.M. He showed her the watch face.
"We should see a beautiful sunset over the lake," she said.
Lucas offered her his arm, and they started in the direction of the boathouse. The closest neighbors were also on Lake Madera, but they were across the mile-wide water on the opposite shore. As Lucas and Meredyth walked off, behind them Jeff and Tommy shouted their good-byes.
Approaching the boathouse from a winding path leading away from the stables, they lost sight of Howard and his mower, but they could hear the motor growing fainter and fainter as it moved back up the hill toward the house and driveway.
Coming on a clearing, they saw that the gardener had done an uneven job of it, whole areas still thick and in need of cutting. "Got to be something wrong with Howard's mower," she said.
"Or Howard. Does he drink on the job?"
She playfully punched him in the shoulder. "No, not that I know of, that is."
Lucas watched the lawn man puttering about the back of his truck now, having climbed off the mower. Lucas had expected Howard to drive the mower back up the ramp and onto the flatbed of his large truck, but he simply shut it off and left it sitting alongside the rear tire in the drive. From this vantage point, looking up the steep knoll to the house, the spindly upturned rakes, hoes, and other garden tools looked like dead tree limbs reaching skyward, creating a bizarre mosaic against the darkening eastern sky.