The man started to say something to him, but Mr. Mac caught sight of Lloyd. His face spread wide with a fear that Lloyd had never seen in him; then his eyes narrowed in disgust. He looked like he did when he saw ewes lamb, or when he punished Lloyd as a child.
“Mr. Mac,” Lloyd said, and took a step toward him, but the old man held up his hands as if to shield his face.
“Mr. Mac.” Lloyd came closer. “I ’pologize ’bout that ’er sheep. I’ll work off the cost to you someway.”
Mr. Mac stumbled backward and pointed at Lloyd; his face was wild and frightened again. He shouted to the man in the suit, “Look at ’im! Look at ’im! A seed of pure evil!”
Lloyd could feel his chest move ahead of his body toward Mr. Mac. He wanted to explain about the sheep, but the old man kept carrying on. The sheriff’s hand, firm but kind, gripped his arm and guided him toward a police car.
The sheriff sat bolt upright on the passenger side and looked straight ahead as the rust-colored hills passed by outside. A fingerprint-smudged Plexiglas barrier ran across the top of the front seat and separated him from Lloyd. As always, the hair on the nape of the sheriff’s neck looked freshly cut. Lloyd had expected them to take his shears and bowie knife, but why were they tearing up his shack? And what was Mr. Mac going on about? Still drunk, probably. He would ask the sheriff when they got to the jail. His thoughts turned to the sheep. He should’ve put it out of its misery — slit its throat and then cut its belly for the vultures. Not like at slaughter, when he would’ve had to root around with his knife and bare hands and clean out its innards. What a godawful stink sheep’s insides had! But this would’ve been easy. It wouldn’t have taken a minute.
In the jail two guards Lloyd didn’t know sat him down inside a small white room he’d never seen before. The man in a suit who had been talking to Mr. Mac came in, with Sheriff Lynch following. Lloyd hadn’t gotten to ask the sheriff what was going on. The man put what looked like a little transistor radio on the table and pressed a button and began to talk.
“Is it okay if we tape-record this interview?” he asked Lloyd.
Lloyd shrugged and smiled a who’s-this-guy? smile at the sheriff. The sheriff gave him a stern, behave-yourself look.
“Sure,” Lloyd said. “I ain’t never been recorded before.”
“Okay,” the man said. He said all their names, where they were, what date and time it was. Then he opened a file folder. Lloyd didn’t like his looks: he had a smile that hid itself, that laughed at you in secret. Mr. Mac could get one of those. And the man talked in one of those citified accents, maybe from Dallas.
“Okay,” the man said. “My name is Thomas Blanchard. I am a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I work in the serial-homicide division.” He shot his eyes up at Lloyd, as if to catch him at something. “Do you understand what that means?”
“Which part?” Lloyd said.
“Serial homicide — serial murder.”
“Nope.”
“It means to kill more than once — sometimes many people in a row.”
“Okay,” Lloyd said.
The man gave him another once-over and said, “You are being held as a material witness in seventeen murders that have occurred in and around this area. You have not been charged in any of them. Should you be charged, you will have the right to counsel, but at this time you have no such right per se. However, as a witness, should you wish to retain counsel, that is also your right. Do you wish to do so?”
Lloyd tried to put the man’s words together. Blanchard bunched up his shoulders, like a squirrel ready to pounce. The sheriff leaned back his chair and studied the ceiling.
After he had drawn out the silence, Lloyd said, “I don’t know. I’m still pretty drunk to think about suchlike. Would I have to pay for him?”
Blanchard’s hand snaked out to the tape recorder, but the sheriff looked at Lloyd and said, “Lloyd, you think you’re too drunk to know what you’re sayin’? I mean, to the point of makin’ things up or disrememberin’?”
“Oh, no,” Lloyd said. The sheriff asked him if he was sure, and he said yes. Then the sheriff told him that to retain a lawyer he would have to pay for one. In that case, Lloyd said, he didn’t want
“Sheriff,” he said. “What’s thisayre all about?”
The sheriff told him he would find out.
But he didn’t, not really. Blanchard asked Lloyd about the night before. He’d gone to Genie’s Too, where the old Genie’s used to be. He’d brought a canteen of Mr. Mac’s stuff with him for setups, because they’d lost their license. He saw all the usual people there: Candy, Huff, Wishbone, Firefly. Dwight, Genie’s old man, did the colored-baby dance, flopping around this brown rag doll and flashing up its skirt. Everybody seemed to be having a real good time. Big plastic bottles were on nearly every table; people were talking — men arguing, women listening. People leaned on each other like scarecrows, some dancing slow and close, others just close, doing a little bump-and-grind.
Blanchard asked him if he had met anyone, danced with anyone. Lloyd grinned and blushed and sought out the sheriff, who smiled this time. Lloyd said, “I always been shy. I guess it’s my rearing, out on that old ranch. And they got their own group there at Genie’s, everybody always foolin’ with everyone else’s.”
By the end of his answer the sheriff’s smile had gone.
Blanchard asked Lloyd the same thing about ten different ways — had he seen anyone new there? The questions got on his nerves. He said, “Sheriff, now what’s this about?”
The sheriff told him to have some patience.
Blanchard asked about places in Amarillo, Lubbock, Muleshoe. Longview, Lamesa, Reno, Abilene — bars Lloyd had sneaked away to when he wanted to be alone. The ones he could remember were all about the same as Genie’s, each with its own little crowd. Blanchard mentioned places from so long ago that Lloyd began to feel as if he were asking about a different person. He drifted off into thinking about Mr. Mac.
Mr. Mac, when Lloyd would ask him where they were, used to say that all he needed to know was that they were in the United States of America. Me used to tell Lloyd that where they were was just like Scotland, and then he’d start laughing to himself until his laughs trailed off into coughs. The sheriff had never, ever laughed at him like that. He didn’t have those kinds of jokes inside him.
Blanchard began asking personal questions: Did he have a girlfriend? Had he ever? No. How long had he been out at the ranch? All his life — about thirty years, according to Mr. Mac. Was he a virgin?
“Now, Sheriff, have I got to answer that?” In truth he didn’t know what he was, because, as he often reflected, he didn’t know whether what Mr. Mac had done made him not a virgin.
Perhaps sensing this, the sheriff told him no, he didn’t have to answer any more questions. In fact, it might be better to quit for the day. “I’m afraid, though, son, we’re gonna have to hold you as a suspect.”
“Suspect of what?” Lloyd said, a sweat creeping on him like the cold rain when he herded in winter.
Lloyd woke to the stink of his own sweat, and he seemed wholly that sweat and that stench — the stench was him, his soul. The overhead light had been switched on. It was a bare bulb caged by heavy wire. He glanced at the steel place he was in: steel walls, floor, ceiling, toilet, stool, table. Everything was bolted down. The steel door had a small square high window made of meshed security glass, and a slot near its bottom, with a sliding cover, for passing food. Lloyd hid his face in the crook of his arm and shook and wished he could go to Mr. Mac’s for some white lightning.
The door clanked open. Lloyd could tell it was the sheriff even though he kept his face hidden and his eyes shut tight. The sheriff put a plastic plate on the table and said, “I was afraid of this.” Then he left.