Spitting out broken teeth or window glass along with words as mushy as his smashed lips, Crocker asked, ‘You aren’t robbing me?’
‘I only steal long-distance minutes. You can keep your money, but you’re going to get one hell of a phone bill.’
Having been sobered by pain, Crocker was now bleary-eyed only with bewilderment. ‘Who are you?’
‘Everybody’s been asking me that same question tonight. I guess I’ll have to come up with a name that resonates.’
Half a block north, Jilly stood beside the Expedition, watching. Perhaps, if she’d seen Dylan getting his ass kicked, she would have come to his aid with a can of insecticide or aerosol cheese.
Hurrying toward the SUV, Dylan glanced back, but Lucas Crocker made no attempt to get up. Maybe the guy had passed out. Maybe he had noticed the bats feeding greedily on the moths in the lamplight: That spectacle would appeal to him. It might even be the kind of thing he found inspiring.
By the time Dylan reached the Expedition, Jilly had returned to the front passenger’s seat. He got in and shut his door.
Her psychic trace upon the steering wheel felt pleasant, rather like immersing work-sore hands in warm water enhanced with curative salts. Then he became aware of her anxiety. As if a live electrical wire had been dropped into the hand bath. With an act of will, he tuned out all those vibrations, good and bad.
‘What the hell happened back there?’ Jilly asked.
Handing the phone to her, he said, ‘Get me the police.’
‘I thought we didn’t want them.’
‘Now we do.’
Headlights appeared in the street behind them. Another slow-moving SUV. Maybe the same one that had earlier drifted by well below the speed limit. Maybe not. Dylan watched it pass. The driver didn’t appear to be interested in them. A true professional, of course, would conceal his interest well.
In the backseat, Shepherd had returned to Great Expectations. He seemed remarkably calm.
The restaurant fronted on Federal Highway 70, the route that Dylan wanted. He headed northwest.
After using the telephone keypad, Jilly listened, then said, ‘Guess the town’s too small for nine-one-one service.’ She keyed in the number for directory assistance, asked for the police, and passed the phone back to Dylan.
Succinctly, he told the police operator about Lucas Crocker, half drunk and fully thrashed, waiting for an ambulance in the restaurant parking lot.
‘May I have your name?’ she asked.
‘That’s not important.’
‘I’m required to ask your name—’
‘And so you have.’
‘Sir, if you were a witness to this assault—’
‘I committed the assault,’ Dylan said.
Law-enforcement routine seldom took a strange turn here in the sleepy heart of the desert. The unsettled operator was reduced to repeating his statement as a question. ‘You committed the assault?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Now, when you send that ambulance for Crocker, send an officer, too.’
‘You’re going to wait for our unit?’
‘No, ma’am. But before the night’s out, you’ll arrest Crocker.’
‘Isn’t Mr. Crocker the victim?’
‘He’s my victim, yes. But he’s a perpetrator in his own right. I know you’re thinking it’s me you’ll want to be arresting, but trust me, it’s Crocker. You also need to send another patrol car—’
‘Sir, filing a false police report is—’
‘I’m not a hoaxer, ma’am. I’m guilty of assault, phone theft, breaking a car window with a man’s face – but I’m not into pranks.’
‘With a man’s face?’
‘I didn’t have a hammer. Listen, you also need to send a second patrol car and an ambulance to the Crocker residence out on… Fallon Hill Road. I don’t see a house number, but as small as this town is, you probably know the place.’
‘You’re going to be there?’
‘No, ma’am. Who’s out there is Crocker’s elderly mother. Noreen, I think her name is. She’s chained in the basement.’
‘Chained in the basement?’
‘She’s been left in her own filth for a couple weeks now, and it’s not a pretty situation.’
‘You chained her in the basement?’
‘No, ma’am. Crocker wrangled a power of attorney, and he’s starving her to death while he gradually loots her bank accounts and sells off her belongings.’