“Who’s L.S. Littlefield?” Bigham asked.
“L.S. is probably Linda Sneed. At least I hope it is. Now, the name Littlefield is about as Austin as you can get. There’s a Littlefield Building here, the Littlefield home, the Littlefield statue. You name it, and there’s a Littlefield ‘it.’”
“That name is familiar to me somehow,” Bigham said. “But I’m not an Austonian.”
“Austinite,” Charles corrected.
They were in a little Mexican restaurant on College Avenue near downtown Bryan, Texas. A waitress came by and cleared away their plates and left a ticket. Lyman fished out a twenty and dropped it on the table.
“Thanks,” Deputy Bigham said.
“Sure. The guy everything is named after is George W. Littlefield. He was a Civil War hero and land baron. He owned the Yellowhouse Ranch up in the Panhandle. I think it was land trimmed off of the original XIT Ranch, which was how the state funded the construction of the new capitol building after the old one burned. I think that was back around the 1880s, 1890s. Littlefield was almost single-handedly responsible for the establishment of UT Austin.”
“Seems to me like there might be a town with that name as well,” Bigham said.
“You’re right. Why didn’t I think of that before? It’s up northwest of Lubbock, not far from the New Mexico state line.”
Bigham nodded and kept rifling through the pages of the Day-Timer, while Charles Lyman, who actually liked the deputy, found himself wanting to slam it on his fingers.
“You know,” Bigham began, “the name Linda Sneed keeps sticking in my craw. Seems to me there was some news item in the local paper some months back. If it’s the same person then I think she’s some kind of fugitive from justice. Something about some real estate dealings.”
“Wanted, huh?” Charles said.
“I think so. I’ve never been much of a newspaper reader, myself, but all you have to do is glance in the direction of the damned things and the stuff jumps out at you.”
“That’s for sure. I’m stuck on that name myself. Not sure why.”
“Okay,” Ralph said. “So what are you going to do now?”
“I’m leaving town,” Lyman said.
“I thought you might.” Ralph Bigham reached beside him, pulled up a leather case, and slid it across the table to Charles Lyman.
“What’s this?”
“Something you might need.”
Lyman tugged the zipper on the side of the case and saw a round metal cylinder. It was the barrel of a.357 Smith & Wesson magnum.
“I can’t accept this,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I can’t hold a gun in my hands.”
“Not a religious thing, is it?” Deputy Bigham asked.
“Also, I can’t vote.”
“You’re a felon.”
“Yeah. I was a kid, and it was a long, long time ago. I’m only lucky we live in an age where they don’t brand your forehead or otherwise mark you.”
“What did you do?” Bigham asked.
“I killed a man,” Charles Lyman said.
The next question was there between them, an invisible yet wholly tangible thing, and Ralph Bigham found himself asking it.
“Who did you kill, Chuck?”
Lucid, teal-blue eyes looked up at Ralph Bigham, measuring, weighing.
“My brother,” Lyman said.
A deep silence settled in around them. It was one of those moments where each was expecting the other to say or ask something first. Bigham waited long enough to be sure that Lyman wasn’t going to give him his life story.
When Lyman didn’t, Bigham pushed the leather pouch directly in front of him and said, “Keep it anyway. Something tells me you’re going to need it.”
Farmhouses, windmills, grain silos miles away, vaguely reminiscent of old, well-crafted dime-store miniatures of such, slowly dwindled in the distance as he passed. The Caprock is a true plain. He felt its solidity, its permanence, as he drove into town in his ancient battered Ford F-150 pickup.
Charles Lyman whistled.
He passed a population sign: 6,032.
Somebody likes it here, he thought.
A wind was up and dust was blowing from the west. It was fine dust, and it was coming in through the air-conditioning vent enough to make his nose itch.
It wasn’t difficult finding downtown Littlefield. Phelps Avenue is an undivided street, with bluish-green metal seats covered by 1950s-style awnings near each intersection. Half of the businesses were closed, permanently, and there were no more than a few dozen cars along the four-block stretch leading from the train tracks to the courthouse.
“I’d say this town has seen better days,” he said to himself. “Reminds me of The Last Picture Show.”
Two blocks from the courthouse-which was not on a town square like most of the rest of Texas’ small burghs-he found a Mexican restaurant. A red neon sign in the front window declared it to be open.
Inside there was red carpet in need of a good cleaning and a pleasant smell wafting from the kitchen.
There was a hand-lettered sign on one wall that declared: Absolutely NO Table Moving.
The waitress was a pudgy young lady of perhaps nineteen. She wore a burgundy apron and a beatific smile. She had dimples in her cheeks and her name tag read Cassandra.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“You said it,” Charles replied. “Coffee first, though. Then bring me whatever you think I’d like to eat.”
She glanced down at his ring finger quickly, saw that it was bare, then looked back up to his eyes. He winked at her, and she smiled, turned, and darted off.
He was nearly done with breakfast and thinking about Carlos McDaniel when they came in the restaurant door. A smile flashed at him, all false teeth and malice. Lyman smiled back.
The two men were the Undertaker and Lardman, Lyman’s new pet names for them in the two seconds that it took him to fully assess them. They were wearing the same clothing he’d last seen them in as they walked away from the cabin, three hundred miles to the south and what seemed a lifetime ago.
And again, Charles Lyman’s blood froze in his veins.
He waited until they took a seat before he fished out his wallet and dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table. He’d liked the waitress, and he was already sorry for the trouble he was about to cause her if things didn’t go well. Then he reached down into his right boot and brought out the magnum. He stood, forgetting to put his truck keys in his pocket, turned, and walked to the table where they were sitting, the pistol with his finger lightly on the trigger behind him.
“Hi,” he said. “My name is Charles Lyman.” He stood there and looked down at the two killers.
The men looked up at him quizzically.
He swung the gun around and pointed it between the two. Their eyes riveted to it. The two men tensed, as if to spring.
“Not a good idea,” Lyman said. “Let’s make an agreement. You two guys be nice and we’ll take us a little ride and have us a little talk. That sound all right with you?”
“Talk? What about?” the Undertaker asked.
“About Carlos McDaniel. And Linda Sneed.”
When he got outside he realized his predicament.
There were two of them, and he had to cover them both. Also, he couldn’t find his truck keys.
He turned back toward the diner for just an instant, but in that short space he noted the face between the still window curtains. It was Cassandra, the waitress.
The face vanished, as if it had never been there.
He made Lardman drive their black Crown Victoria while the Undertaker rode shotgun and he covered the two of them from the backseat.
The late-model Crown Vic wended its way through town and out into the countryside where the sun beat down relentlessly on the stubby cotton and the tall corn.
“You guys are pretty quiet,” Lyman said. “Remember our agreement.”
“We ain’t got nothing to say,” the Undetaker replied.