“See if there’s any kind a shoe print on the inside a that door.”
Otto heaved a sigh, walked to the door and examined it. He came back with his tweezers poised. “Nothing.”
“Son of a bitch!” Sidney Blackpool said. “That miserable fucking …”
“Hold still!” Otto said, extracting the spines from the side of his partner’s neck and face, swabbing the area with the rubbing alcohol. “Maybe we oughtta go down to Eisenhower Hospital and have them take a look. Are these freaking spines poisonous?”
“No, they’re just harmless plants,” Sidney Blackpool said, so furious he couldn’t light a cigarette.
“Calm down,” Otto said. “There’s nothing you can do. And far as harmless, there ain’t nothing in this desert that’s harmless.”
“I shoulda thought about …”
“We’re outta our element,” Otto said calmly. “There’s no sense saying what we shoulda done. Hold still. I almost got the last a those little bastards.”
When he finished, Otto put the tweezers and alcohol away and his partner sat in the kitchen trying to get his rage under control.
“I think we oughtta go home tomorrow,” Otto said.
“I think we oughtta book that fucking Brickman for murder!” Sidney Blackpool said.
“We ain’t booking nobody,” Otto said. “We got some half-baked theories and that’s all we got.”
“Let’s search the place at least.”
“For what?”
“The cassette.”
Otto leaned over his partner and with his face six inches away, said, “Give … it … up! Don’t you hear me? The tape is meaningless now. Jones can’t or won’t identify Harry Bright’s voice. The gun’s gone. Brickman’s onto the whole thing. And we ain’t never gonna know what happened. Do you understand that? Can you get it through your head? I’m outta patience, goddamnit!”
“Okay, you’re right. The cassette wouldn’t make any difference now. You’re right. I’m grasping at …”
“Sand. There ain’t even any straws to grasp at in this wasteland. Let’s go home.”
“It’s not the desert’s fault,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“It ain’t nobody’s fault, I’m starting to think,” Otto Stringer said.
Both men were resigned to failure, but with a policeman’s curiosity, each instinctively took a look around the little mobile home. Otto stepped into the tiny living room saying, “Sidney, check this out.”
Photographs. Some in photo cubes, some in gilt frames, some in wood frames. Pictures stuck in the corners of larger framed pictures. There were thirty photographs in the little room, some as large as eight by ten. They were on tables; they filled the small bookshelf; they covered the walls. Eighteen were of Danny Bright and twelve were of Patsy Bright. Harry Bright was present in four of the pictures. Otto picked up a framed family portrait when Danny was about ten years old.
“Nice-looking kid,” Otto said. “Looks just like her. She hasn’t changed much, I’ll have to say that. Of course I didn’t see her up close.”
Sidney Blackpool felt seventy years old. He walked painfully into the living room and sat in Harry Bright’s chair.
He took the picture from his partner and said, “Yeah, she’s changed. This’s Patsy Bright. This isn’t Trish Decker. She’s changed.”
“Harry Bright,” Otto said, looking at the beaming cop. It was a shot of him in the tan uniform of the San Diego police. He was holding Danny in his arms and the boy was wearing his father’s police hat. Harry Bright was a strapping, healthy-looking man.
“He looks like Harry Bright,” Otto said. “He even smiles like Harry Bright. Now let’s get the fuck outta here.”
“Brickman rummaged through the cassettes,” Sidney Blackpool noted. “I guess he found it. We better report this to Paco Pedroza.”
There were several cassettes and records on the floor beside the television set. A cabinet door was open and there was a modest sound system inside. Two small speakers were wired to the wall over the five-foot sofa.
Otto opened another cabinet door above the television and found a videocassette recorder. He turned it on and switched on the television set. Then he punched the play button. It was an old movie. The volume was turned all the way down and Sidney Blackpool stared at a silent movie while Otto went to the telephone and asked the operator for the number of the Mineral Springs police.
The movie was The Enchanted Cottage. Sidney Blackpool remembered it vaguely. Robert Young was a soldier whose face had been disfigured by war wounds. Dorothy McGuire was a plain Jane who was neurotically shy. They fell in love and discovered that whenever they entered their little cottage a miracle happened. He was transformed into what he’d been before the war. She was turned into the lovely young woman he saw in her. In short, they were transformed into Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire, two beautiful movie stars. It was a very corny movie. Nevertheless, Sidney Blackpool began watching it with interest. He turned up the volume and even listened to the dialogue.
Otto reached Anemic Annie who said that Paco was at the scene of the pursuit where the sheriffs car and the suspect’s car had crashed. Maynard Rivas had been slightly injured. She wasn’t expecting Paco back for a while.
Otto took a walk outside, careful to avoid cactus gardens, while Sidney Blackpool continued watching The Enchanted Cottage. Eventually, Otto came back inside. He was exhausted. He looked at his watch and wondered if it would be yet another night of being too late for the hotel dining room. Somehow he wanted just one more dinner in the hotel, and then he was going home to Hollywood whether his partner did or not. But one more meal in the hotel dining room would be very nice. He thought he deserved it.
Otto got himself settled on the sofa while Sidney Blackpool slouched in Harry Bright’s easy chair. Otto could see that his partner seemed enthralled with the old movie about people making believe. And people making believe made him think of Harry Bright’s song. And thinking of Harry Bright’s song made him think of Coy Brickman. And while he was thinking of Coy Brickman he heard footsteps outside the mobile home.
Then the door opened and Otto Stringer said, “I was just thinking about you.”
CHAPTER 17
“Paco told me to come get you guys,” Coy Brickman said. “He figured you’d be here after Annie told him you borrowed a gun to maybe protect you from coyotes. Night shooting in the desert can be tricky.”
“You son of a bitch,” Sidney Blackpool said, starting to get out of the easy chair until Otto laid his hand on his partner’s shoulder.
Otto switched off the videocassette recorder, and Coy Brickman, pretending he hadn’t heard Sidney Blackpool, said, “Watching The Enchanted Cottage, huh? That’s Harry’s favorite movie. Musta seen it a hundred times. I even had to sit through it myself a couple times when Harry was drunk. What happened to your face, Blackpool?”
Sidney Blackpool’s jaw was puffy and turning purple from ear to chin. In a swatch, six inches long and an inch wide, were a dozen clotted pinpricks where the barbs had been extracted.
“Sidney fell down,” Otto said. “I fell down too. City boys don’t belong in the desert.”
“I coulda told you that,” Coy Brickman said, staring at Sidney Blackpool with those unblinking gray eyes.
Otto looked at Coy Brickman’s shoes, but they were shiny and clean. He’d had time to brush them. His blue uniform pants were also dust free. His thinning auburn hair was freshly combed. In fact, he looked as though he was ready for inspection, which in a sense he was, Otto realized.
“How’d the door get that crack in it?” Coy Brickman asked. “And how’d you guys get in here? Paco give you a key?”