“And what was in there?” Lyle said. “Did you see some of the books I’ve heard about? Lewis and Clark’s original journals? Catlin’s books about Indians? A first edition of Irwin Wister?”
“Owen Wister,” Parker corrected. “The Virginian. Yes, I saw them.”
“Ha!” Lyle said with triumph. “I heard Angler brag that the Indian book was worth a half million.”
Parker realized two things at once. They were close enough to the imposing old ranch house they could see its Gothic outline emerge from the white. And Juan had stopped the pickup.
“Books!” Juan said, biting off the word. “We’re here for fucking books? You said we would be getting his treasure.”
“Juan,” Lyle said, “his books are his treasure. That’s why we brought the stock trailer.”
“I don’t want no books!” Juan growled, “I thought it was jewelry or guns. You know, rare things. I don’t know nothing about old books.”
“It’ll all work out,” Lyle said, patting Juan on the shoulder. “Trust me. People spend a fortune collecting them.”
“Then they’re fools,” Juan said, shaking his head.
“Drive right across the lawn,” Lyle instructed Juan. “Pull the trailer up as close as you can get to the front doors so we don’t have to walk so far.”
“So we can fill it with shitty old books,” Juan said, showing his teeth.
“Calm down, amigo,” Lyle said to Juan. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“About a thousand times, amigo.”
Lyle huffed a laugh, and Parker watched Juan carefully. He didn’t seem to be playing along.
Lyle said, “Keep an eye on the lawyer while I open the front door.” To Parker, he said, “Give me those keys.”
Parker handed them over and he watched Lyle fight the blizzard on his way up the porch steps. The wind was ferocious and Lyle kept one hand clamped down on his hat. A gust nearly drove him off the porch. If anything, it was snowing even harder.
“Books,” Juan said under his breath. “He tricked me.”
The massive double front doors to the Angler home filled a gabled stone archway and were eight feet high and studded with iron bolt heads. Angler had a passion for security, and Parker remembered noting the thickness of the open door when he’d visited. They were over two inches thick. He watched Lyle brush snow away from the keyhole and fumble with the key ring with gloved fingers.
“Books are not treasure,” Juan said.
Parker sensed an opening. “No, they’re not. You’ll have to somehow find rich collectors who will overlook the fact that they’ve been stolen. Lyle doesn’t realize each one of those books has an ex libre mark.”
When Juan looked over, puzzled, Parker said, “It’s a stamp of ownership. Fritz didn’t collect so he could sell the books. He collected because he loved them. They’ll be harder than hell to sell on the open market. Book collectors are a small world.”
Juan cursed.
Parker said, “It’s just like his crazy story about the antelope and the Hindenburg. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“He’s crazy.”
“I’m afraid so,” Parker said. “And he sucked you into this.”
“I didn’t kill your dog.”
“What?”
“I didn’t kill it. I shot by his head and he yelped. I couldn’t shoot an old dog like that. I like dogs if they don’t want to bite me.”
“Thank you, Juan.” Parker hoped the storm wasn’t as violent in town and that Champ would find a place to get out of it.
They both watched Lyle try to get the door open. The side of his coat was already covered with snow.
“A man could die just being outside in a storm like this,” Parker said. Then he took a long breath and held it.
“Lyle, he’s crazy,” Juan said. “He wants to fix his family. He don’t know how to move on.”
“Well said. There’s no reason why you should be in trouble for Lyle’s craziness,” Parker said.
“Mister, I know what you’re doing.”
“But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Juan said nothing.
“My wife …” Parker said. “We’re having some problems. I need to talk to her and set things right. I can’t imagine never talking to her again. For Christ’s Sake, my last words to her were, ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’”
Juan snorted.
“Please …”
“He wants you to help him,” Juan said, chinning toward the windshield. Beyond it, Lyle was gesticulating at them on the porch.
“We can just back away,” Parker said. “We can go home.”
“You mean just leave him here?”
“Yes,” Parker said. “I’ll never breathe a word about this to anyone. I swear it.”
Juan seemed to be thinking about it. On the porch, Lyle was getting angrier and more frantic. Horizontal snow and wind made his coat sleeves and pant legs flap. A gust whipped his hat off, and Lyle flailed in the air for it but it was gone.
“Go,” Juan said.
“But I thought …”
“Go now,” he said, showing the pistol.
Parker was stunned by the fury of the storm. Snow stung his face and he tried to duck his head beneath his upraised arm to shield it. The wind was so cold it felt hot on his exposed bare skin.
“Help me get this goddamned door open!” Lyle yelled. “I can’t get the key to work.” He handed Parker the keys.
“I don’t know which one it is any more than you do,” Parker yelled back.
“Just fucking try it, counselor!” Lyle said, jabbing at him with the Colt.
Parker leaned into the door much as Lyle had. He wanted to block the wind with his back so he could see the lock and the keys and have room to work. He tried several keys and none of them turned. Only one seemed to fit well. He went back to it. He could barely feel his fingers and feet.
He realized Lyle was shouting again.
“Juan! Juan! What the hell are you doing?”
Parker glanced up. Lyle was on the steps, his back to him, shouting and waving his arms at the pickup and trailer that vanished into the snow. Faint pink tail lights blinked out.
At that moment, Parker pulled up on the iron door handle with his left hand while he turned the key with his right. The ancient lock gave way.
Parker slammed his shoulder into the door and stepped inside the dark house and pushed the door shut behind him and rammed the bolt home.
Lyle cursed at him and screamed for Parker to open the door.
Instead, Parker stepped aside with his back against the cold stone interior wall as Lyle emptied his .45 Colt at the door, making eight dime-sized holes in the wood that streamed thin beams of white light to the slate-rock floor.
He hugged himself and shivered and condensation clouds from his breath haloed his head.
Parker roamed through Angler’s library, hugging himself in an attempt to keep warm and to keep his blood flowing. There were no lights and the phone had been shut off months before. Muted light filtered through gaps in the thick curtains. Outside, the blizzard howled and threw itself against the old home but couldn’t get in any more than Lyle could get in. Snow covered the single window in the library except for one palm-sized opening, and Parker used it to look around outside for Lyle or Lyle’s body but he couldn’t see either. It had been twenty minutes since he’d locked Lyle out.
At one point he thought he heard a cry, but when he stopped pacing and listened all he could hear was the wind thundering against the windows.
He started a fire in the fireplace using old books as kindling and had fed it with broken furniture and a few decorative logs he’d found in the great room downstairs. Orange light from the flames danced on the spines of the old books.