The car was empty.
Wyetta dipped her head inside.
“He took the keys,” she yelled.
“No he didn’t.” Rorie stood at the rear of the car. The keys were in the trunk. And the trunk was open.
Wyetta swore. “He’s got the money. He’s rabbiting.”
Once more, they reloaded their guns. Rorie’s fingers wouldn’t move right. She gave up with only five shells in the clip, jammed it into the butt of her automatic. The crash, the storm, the gunshots. . she was numb. Colder than she’d ever been in her life. She felt dead, and the wind was shoveling dirt over her, a boot hill of dirt blowing out of the night sky.
She didn’t want to go anywhere. She just wanted to stand there in the storm, and take it, and wait for it to finish her off.
But Wyetta was moving. “This way,” she yelled. “He’s gotta be heading back to Graceland. It’s the only shelter for miles.”
Rorie sucked a deep breath and tasted that boot hill dirt on her tongue.
She swallowed hard.
If she didn’t move, she’d lose Wyetta in the concrete night.
She moved.
They stood by the grave. A warm breath of wind washed Rorie’s forehead. Tonight it was so very quiet. Almost peaceful.
“It has to be here,” Wyetta said. God, but she couldn’t seem to shut up. “Wyatt spelled it out on the Ouija board. EAP. . TCB.”
She pointed at the big bronze marker. Rorie stared at it. The grave of Elvis Aron Presley. EAP. His personal motto stood out in stark relief at the bottom. TCB, with a lightning bolt sprouting from the C. And any fool knew that TCB stood for takin’ care of business.
EAP. . TCB. Rorie wondered if the Ouija board had really spelled out those letters for Wyetta. She decided that it really didn’t matter. Even if the board had spelled out the message, the fingers on the heart-shaped cedar planchette belonged to Wyetta, and Wyetta already knew about the grave marker, which was a twin to the marker at the real Graceland. The message could be nothing more than a trick of the sheriff’s subconscious mind.
“Damn!” Wyetta said. “Check this out, cowgirl!”
Wyetta was kneeling at the bottom corner of the marker. She slipped one Annie Oakley-gloved hand into a hole. Elbow deep, then further.
“Maybe it’s only some jackrabbit’s burrow.”
“Looks a little bit wide for that.” Wyetta grunted. “But it doesn’t matter if it is. Komoko could have jammed the money into it during the storm. Damn hole probably filled up with sand that night, anyway. Maybe the storm buried his loot for him.”
Rorie could see that Wyetta was probably right about that last part. Fresh sand was heaped around the edge of the hole. Maybe the storm had filled it up.
If that was true, someone else had already emptied it.
Or some thing. Rorie wondered if a Gila monster waited in the rabbit hole. Those nasty suckers sometimes took over other animal’s burrows, and they were dangerous, venomous. .
“Be careful,” Rorie warned. “You don’t know what the hell’s down there.”
Wyetta’s eyes gleamed. “Yes I do.”
Her arm traveled deeper. Almost up to the shoulder. “Whatever made this hole did a damn good job-practically hollowed out the area under the marker. Damn. I wish my arm was longer. .”
Rorie stared at the fresh dirt heaped around the hole. She spotted a boot print pressed in the soft sand. The pattern wasn’t anything like Wyetta’s Noconas, or the Tony Lamas Rorie was wearing. The print didn’t look like one of Ellis’s motorcycle boots, either.
“The money isn’t here, Wyetta.”
“Hold your horses, cowgirl. It’s got to be here. Maybe Komoko shoved it in real good with a branch or something. Maybe what we need to do is get a truck with a winch on it. Haul this goddamn hunk of bronze out of the way and-”
Rumbling thunder slapped the sheriff’s words.
Rorie looked to the heavens.
Nothing there but blue sky.
Again the thunder. Only this time she recognized it as a shotgun blast.
Maybe a mile away. Maybe not that far.
Maybe as close as Priscilla’s trailer.
Wyetta pulled to a stop in a tangle of brush surrounded by cottonwoods. She drew her pistol and stepped out of the Jeep. Rorie did the same.
Fifty feet of scrub separated them from the trailer. Ellis’s scab-colored Caddy was parked in front, but Rorie didn’t see any other cars. Of course, it would be easy enough to hide one in the brush. She kept her eyes peeled for Baddalach’s Range Rover or Benteen’s Dodge Dakota. The Range Rover was new, metallic blue. It would be easy to spot. Benteen’s truck would be tougher-painted a dry-twig beige, with rust spots, it could blend in pretty easy.
Wyetta flashed a hand-signal. The two women parted, advancing on the trailer from different angles.
They were getting real close now.
Rorie stepped over a net of twigs. Middle-of-nowhere quiet out here. The least little sound was magnified a hundred times. The way the shotgun blast had been. The way-
A loud voice came from the trailer, “I'll tell you anything you want. . but you have to get me out of here.”
Rorie stopped dead in her tracks. She glanced to the right and saw Wyetta frozen the same way. Because it was Priscilla’s voice they’d heard. And it was so loud. And Priscilla never raised her voice at all, not even when-
"I'll do my best. That’s all I can promise.”
Rorie had only talked to Jack Baddalach twice. Still, she was sure that the second voice belonged to him.
But why was he yelling?
"That's not good enough,” Priscilla said, “I can't stand it here. Not another minute. not with that son of a bitch I'm married to. If you want to know what happened to Komoko, you have to get me out of here. Either that, or you’ve got to kill him for me.”
Rorie was shaking. Priscilla’s voice was so cold. And it sounded like a whisper. But it was the loudest whisper she had ever heard.
Something square and black ripped through the trailer’s screen door. Rorie brought her pistol up. Out of the comer of her eye she saw Wyetta mimic the action.
The black thing kicked up dust as it landed between them.
It was a boom box. And it was notched to full volume.
“I didn't come here to kill anyone,” Baddalach said.
“Then you'll never find out what happened to Vince Komoko,” Priscilla replied.
Rorie aimed her pistol at the boom box. She knew it was crazy. She knew the stereo couldn’t hurt her, but she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of it.
Baddalach said, “Okay. . maybe I can help you get out of pipeline beach. I’ve got friends in Vegas, and if you help us out. .”
The screen door exploded off its hinges. Ellis came down the stairs, running for all he was worth, and there was a shotgun in his hands, and he pulled the trigger and pumped, pulled the trigger and pumped, until there wasn’t enough boom box left to make a transistor radio.
He dropped the gun in the dust and stared at the stereo’s guts. That patented Presley sneer crept across his face, and he swaggered up to the wrecked boom box and gave it a kick.
He was wearing black leather pants and that black leather jacket he was so proud of. But Rorie could see that something was wrong with the jacket. It was wet. Slick and shiny.
It was. . spattered with blood.
Fresh blood.
For a second, Rorie thought that Ellis had been shot.
Only for a second, though.
Ellis finally noticed her. He glanced at Wyetta and his sneer disappeared. But the big artery on the left side of his neck thudded away, pumping blood beneath a blanket of scar tissue.
To Rorie, that artery looked like the devil’s own tail.
Ellis’s eyes burned a hole straight through her, because he could see well enough what she was looking at. He slapped that thing that looked like a microphone against his throat, "Your bitch of a. . sister is inside. . you can have what’s left of. . her I blew the cunt right out of her pants but she deserved what she. . got and-"