The roar inside the ancient red-and-white Dodge reminded me of the plane as we headed east toward a town that had been shattered without being aware of it. Its citizens could not even begin to understand what really had happened to a little girl walking home with her guitar. They could not comprehend what was happening to those of us who had been called in to help.
We were being destroyed one by one because the enemy had an uncanny ability to sense where we were weak and where we could be hurt. Marino was prisoner and weapons carrier for this woman. My niece, who was like my daughter, was head injured in a treatment center, and it was a miracle she had not died. A simple man who swept floors and sipped moonshine in the mountains was about to be lynched for a hideous crime he had not committed, and Mote would retire on disability, while Ferguson was dead.
The cause and effect of evil spread out like a tree that blocked all light inside my head. It was impossible to know where the wickedness had started and where it would end, and I was afraid to analyze too closely if one of its twisted limbs had caught me up. I did not want to think my feet might no longer be in contact with the ground.
“Ma’am, is there anything else I can do for you?” I was vaguely aware that the driver was speaking to me.
I opened my eyes. We were parked in front of the Travel-Eze, and I wondered how long we had been there.
“I hated to wake you. But it’d be a lot more comfortable to get in your bed instead of sitting out here. Maybe cheaper, too.” The same yellow-haired clerk welcomed me back as he checked me in. He asked me which side of the motel I’d like to be on. As I recalled, one side viewed the school where Emily had gone and the other offered a panorama of the interstate. It didn’t matter because the mountains were all around, blazing in the day and black against the starry night sky.
“Just put me in nonsmoking, please. Is Pete Marino still here?” I asked.
“He sure is, though he don’t come in much. Would you rather be next to him?”
“No, I’d rather not. He’s a smoker and I’d like to be as far away from that as I can.” This was not my reason, of course.
“Then I’ll just put you on a different wing.”
“That would be fine. And when Benton Wesley gets in, will you have him ring my room immediately?” Then I asked him to call a car rental company and have something with an air bag delivered to me early in the morning.
I went to my room and locked and chained the door and propped a chair beneath the knob. I kept my revolver on top of the toilet while I took a long, hot bath with several drops of Hermes perfuming the water. The fragrance stroked me like warm, loving hands, moving up my throat and face and lightly through my hair. For the first time in a while I felt soothed, and at intervals I ran more hot water and the perfume’s sweet oily splashes swirled like clouds. I had pulled the shower curtain shut, and in this fragrant sauna I dreamed.
The times I had relived loving Benton Wesley could not be counted. I did not want to admit how often the images leaned against my thoughts until I could no longer resist giving myself up to their embrace. They were more powerful than anything I had ever known, and I had stored every detail of our first encounter here, though it had not happened exactly here. I had memorized the number of that room and would know it forever.
In truth, my lovers had been few, but they had all been formidable men who were not without sensitivity and a certain acceptance that I was a woman who was not a woman. I was the body and sensibilities of a woman with the power and drive of a man, and to take away from me was to take away from themselves. So they gave the best they had, even my ex-husband. Tony, who was the least evolved in the lot, and sexuality was a shared erotic competition. Like two creatures of equal strength who had found each other in the jungle, we tumbled and took as much as we gave.