those detectives won’t keep their mouths shut. Not them.”
I’m pretty sure I can make Verdad and Hagerstrom back olI,” Sharp
assured him. He pulled the clip out of the pistol to make sure it was
fully loaded. “The bastards are supposed to stay out of this, and they
know it. When I catch them red-handed in the middle of it, they’re
going to realize that their careers and pensions are in jeopardy.
They’ll back off. And when they’re gone, we’ll take out Shadway and the
woman.”
“If they don’t back off?”
“Then we take them out, too,” Sharp said. With the heel of his hand, he
slammed the clip back into the pistol.
The refrigerator hummed noisily.
The damp air still smelled stale, with a hint of decay.
They hunched over the old kitchen table like two conspirators in one of
those old war movies about the anti-Nazi underground in Europe.
Rachael’s thirty4wo pistol lay on the cigarette-scarred Formica, within
easy reach, though she did not really believe she would need it-at least
not tonight.
Whitney Gavis had absorbed her story-in a condensed form-with remarkably
little shock and without skepticism, which surprised her.
He did not seem to be a gullible man. He would not believe just any
crazy tale he was told. Yet he had believed her wild narrative.
Maybe he trusted her implicitly beeause Benny loved her.
“Benny showed you pictures of me?” she had asked.
And Whitney had said, “Yeah, kid, the last couple months, you’re all he
can talk about.” So she said, “Then he knew that what we had together
was special, knew it before I did.” Whitney said, “No, he told me that
you knew the relationship was special, too, but you were afraid to admit
it just yet, he said you’d come around, and he was right.” She said,
“If he showed you pictures of me, why didn’t he show me pictures of you
or at least talk about you, since you’re his best friend?” And Whitney
had said, “Benny and me are committed to each other, have been ever
since Nam, as good as brothers, better than brothers, so we share
everything. But until recently, you hadn’t committed to him, kid, and
until you did, he wasn’t going to share everything with you. Don’t hold
that against him. It’s Nam that made him that way.
Vietnam was probably another reason that Whitney Gavis believed her
incredible tale, even the part about being pursued by a mutant beast in
the Mojave Desert.
After a man had been through the madness of Vietnam, maybe nothing
strained his credulity anymore.
Now Whitney said, “But you don’t know for certain that those snakes
killed him.
“No,” Rachael admitted Mbecamebackfr’omthedeadafterbeing hitbythe truck,
is it possible he could come back after dying of multiple snakebites””
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“And if he doesn’t stay dead, you can’t be certain he’ll just degenerate
into something that’ 11 remain out there on the desert, living pretty
much an animal’s existence.”
“No,” she said, “of course, I can’t guarantee that, either.”
He frowned, and the scarred side of his otherwise handsome face puckered
and creased as if it were paper.
Outside, the night was marked by ominous noises, though all were related
to the storm, the fronds of a palm tree scraped against the roof, the
motel sign, stii’red by the wind, creaked on corroded hinges, a loose
section of dowaspouting popped and rattled against its braces.
Rachael listened for sounds that could not be explained by the wind and
rain, heard none, but kept listening anyway.
Whitney said, “The really disturbing thing is that Eric must’ve
overteani Benny telling you about this place.”
“Maybe,” Rachael said uneasily.
“Almost certainly, kid.”
“All right. But considering his apperance when I last saw him, he won’t
be able to just stand out along the road and hitch a ride.
Besides, he seemed to be devolving mentally and emotionally, not just
physically. I mean…
Whitney, if you could’ve seen him with those snakes, you’d realize how
unlikely it is that he’d have the mental capacity to find a path out of
the desert and somehow get all the way here to Vegas.”
“Unlikely, but not impossible,” he said. “Nothing’s impossible, kid.