"And then it tried to kill you when you were hanging from your seatbelt."
The artist shrugged, winced at the pain that exploded in his shoulder, and sighed capitulation. "Okay, okay, so it was a stupid coyote, okay? So I was so damn scared it scared the hell out of me. It would have scared anybody. But it wasn't a coyote that ran me off the damn road!"
"Good." Sparrow nodded sharply. "Now we're getting somewhere." He glanced down at the small notepad he held in his left hand, chewed on the eraser end of his pencil for a moment, and said, "Now, about that invisible vehicle…"
The Coronado Bar was unoriginal in both name and decor. As Bernalillo inexorably changed from an outpost on the Rio Grande into an Albuquerque bedroom community, the Coronado just as stubbornly refused to change with it. A long bar on the right-hand wall, tables and booths everywhere else, and a jukebox that muttered country-western all day long. The TV on the wall in back never played anything but sports, minor league baseball tonight from Southern California. Smoke and liquor in the air, as many cigarette butts on the bare floor as in the aluminum ashtrays. It catered neither to the tourists nor the newcomers, and didn't much care that business didn't boom. It did well enough, which was well enough for its regulars.
Indian Territory was at the back.
Although there were a handful of exceptions, most of the men who drove in from the pueblos stuck to the two last booths and three last tables. There was nothing belligerent about it; it just happened that way. Even the Spanish stayed away.
Especially when the Konochine came to town.
Leon Ciola nursed a long-neck beer in the last booth. He was alone, seated under a wall lamp whose bulb he had unscrewed as soon as he'd taken his seat. He didn't like the light, didn't like the way the Anglos tried not to stare at the web of scars across his face or the scars on his knuckles.
It was better to sit in shadow.
It was also better to face the entrance, so when the man came in, Ciola would see him first and lift a hand in greeting, before a question could be asked or a voice raised. What he didn't need tonight was talk, debate—What's the matter withyour people, Leon, don't they believe in the twentiethcentury? The time for that was past. The others— Nick Lanaya, Dugan Velador, fools like that — they could do their best to keep the talk alive, to deal with Anglo crooks like that Falkner woman and sell the People down the river without an ounce of guilt. Not him. He had plans.
They thought he was beaten. They thought his time away would change him.
He drank, not sipped.
It had.
It had changed him.
It had made him worse.
Just before eleven the man came in, spotted him right away, and dropped heavily into the booth.
Ciola tugged on the beak on his cap, a greeting and an adjustment. "You're late."
"Shit truck wouldn't start. Wasn't for you, I wouldn't make the effort."
Ciola watched him, hiding his distaste by emptying the bottle and waving it over his head, so the waitress, such as she was, would bring him another.
The other man didn't ask for one, and one wasn't offered.
"So?" Leon said.
The man lifted one shoulder. "So they brought in some FBI, straight from Washington. They came in this morning. One man, one woman."
Ciola coughed a laugh. "You're kidding."
"They're supposed to be experts."
"A woman?"
The man nodded, and offered a lopsided grin. "Gets better. They're Anglos."
The empty bottle was taken away, a full one left in its place. The man grabbed it before Ciola did, took a long swallow, and set it down. His fingers stayed around the neck. "Am I worried?"
"No."
"Good." The man stood and hitched up his pants. "I hate being worried. It always pisses me off."
He left without a word to anyone else.
The bartender turned up the baseball game.
Ciola wiped the bottle's mouth with his palm and drank the rest without coming up for air.
When the waitress returned for the empty, he grabbed her wrist, just strongly enough to keep her bent over the table. "Chica," he said softly, "what are you doing tonight?"
"Getting a life” she answered, yanking her arm free. "Try it sometime."
He laughed. Not a sound, but he tilted his head back and laughed. Wonderful! She was wonderful! He wiped a tear from his eye and shook his head. Since she didn't want him, he would leave her the biggest tip she had ever had in her miserable life.
And to make it better, he wouldn't even kill her.
Scully massaged the back of her neck. It was hard to keep her eyes open, and she didn't bother to hide a yawn.
"The desert night air," Mulder said. "It's almost too peaceful here."
"I know." She dropped her hand into her lap. "The point is, Mulder, we haven't enough data yet to show us why they were killed, much less explain the connections in any reasonable fashion. And I don't think we're going to find them out here. Not tonight, anyway." She smiled wanly. "I think I'm a little too punchy."
"We both are." He stretched one arm at a time over his head, clasped his hands, and pushed his palms toward the sky. "I just wish I could see the connections between a handful of cows, a kid by the river, and a couple in the desert." He brought his arms down, one hand again moving to his nape.
"Mulder, relax, we just got here, remember? Besides, you have to remember that the thinner air out here slows down the intellectual process, the result of less oxygen flowing to the brain."
He grinned and looked at her sideways. "Is that a doctor thing?"
"No, that’s a Scully thing." She grinned and pushed off the bench and held out her hand. When he grabbed it, she pulled him up, turned him around, pushing him lightly toward the motel. "The doctor thing is, get some sleep, like Red said, or you'll be useless in the morning."
He nodded as he waved a weary good night over his shoulder, sidestepping a garden wall just before he tripped over it. Another wave—I'm okay, I know what I'm doing—before he disappeared into the passageway, and she couldn't help wondering what it was like for him — seeing things other people sometimes couldn't; engaging in a pursuit with oftentimes terrifying intensity; looking so young and deceptively guileless that there had been many times when he was severely underestimated.
She wasn't surprised when, passing his room on her way to bed, she saw light slipping around the edges of the drapes.
Exhausted or not, he would be up most of the night, turning over what he knew, and setting up what he didn't know so he would know the right questions to ask, beyond the how and who and why.
She wished him luck.
Right now, she was having difficulty remembering her own name.
She fingered her key out of her pocket, moved on to the next room. and stopped as she inserted the key in the lock.
You're tired, Dana, that's all.
She looked anyway.
The Inn gates were closed, the lanterns out. Only a faint glow from a nearby streetlamp reached over the wall.
A man stood at the gate, arms loose at his sides.
She couldn't see his face or his clothes; just his outline.
Tired, she reminded herself, and pushed into the room, flicked on the wall switch, and, as she closed the door, checked the gate again.
He was still there.
Watching.
TEN
Mulder didn't have to be outside to know it was hot and getting hotter, even though it was just past ten. Even with sunglasses, the sun's glare was almost too much, and to stare at the passing scenery too long made it jump and shimmer, showing him things he knew weren't there.
There were no clouds, no signs of rain. It was hard to believe there ever was.
He rode with Scully in the back seat of Sheriff Sparrow's dusty blue-and-white cruiser, Garson up front on the passenger side. It was evident from their conversation that the two men had known each other for a long time, using shorthand gestures and single-word answers, mostly grunts. As far as Mulder could tell, the gist of it was, there had been no further incidents since the death of the boy, except for a drunk driver who claimed to have been forced off the road by an invisible, or incredibly short vehicle.