Bad Signs by R.J. Ellory
Digger felt sick. He felt like a scolded child. He had been trying to apologize, and now he was the bad guy. Wasn’t this just another example of what Earl had been telling him? Some people had all the cards stacked against them, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
“You couldn’t even do it if you tried,” she said, and she realized then that he really was backing away, that she had him on the defensive, that he was no more capable of shooting her than he was of raping her.
“Son of a bitch,” she said. “You pathetic son of a bitch—” She raised her hand then, as if to slap him once more.
Incensed, angry, more ashamed than anything else, Digger hit her. He just let fly wildly and the gun connected with the side of her head and she went over like a tenpin.
She fell onto the bed, blood already visible on her cheek and jaw line, and Digger stood there for a second with nothing in his mind but rage and terror.
He looked down at her, and it seemed in that moment that everything—every shame, every rebuttal, every denial, every ignominy that had befallen him—was now personified and represented by this girl. There were tears in his eyes.
You pathetic son of a bitch.
He hit her again. Hit her hard in the side of the head. And then again.
It was then that he felt it. Felt the blood rushing to his groin, felt his dick coming to life, and he started to feel nauseous, strangely disgusted with himself, and then it passed almost as soon as it had arrived. In its place was a sense of panic and disorientation. He wiped the side of the gun off on the bedsheet, and he leaned close to the girl and he could hear her breathing, shallow and rapid, but still breathing. He didn’t know what to feel. Relief that she was still alive? That he hadn’t killed her? Anger toward her for making him feel ashamed? For making him feel so pathetic?
Digger started backward toward the door, and then he turned suddenly.
The room ahead of him was blurred through his tears. His nose was running and he felt like a little boy, a scared little boy, and he hated himself and he hated her and he hated the world.
He had to get out of there. Had to get out of there and as far away as possible. He looked down at the gun in his hand, the blood on the chamber, and he felt the tension in his groin and the weakness in his knees, and he wondered for a second if it was like this for everybody.
He almost lost his balance as he flew down the stairs and out to Gil Webster’s pickup. He jammed the vehicle in gear and screeched away, his heart racing, his mind overwhelmed with a thousand different thoughts.
Do what Earl would do, he kept thinking. Just do what Earl Sheridan would do.
But he didn’t know what Earl Sheridan would do, and Earl was dead for sure, and the fact that there was no one to tell him what to do was the scariest thing of all.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As Digger Danziger fled the Webster house, Clay Luckman and Bailey Redman caught a ride in the direction of Tucson. The pickup slowed to the side of the road and waited for them. The driver was a rough-looking feller, his eyes the sharp blue that came from walking into the sun most days of your life. In back of the pickup was a mess of cornstalks and old tin cans.
“You can get in there. Can take you most of the way to Tucson, but then I’m turning off, okay?”
“Any distance you can take us would be …” Clay started, but the driver had already revved the engine into life and his words were drowned out.
Their let-off was all of three miles from the city limits, and there they waved goodbye to the pickup and stood side by side at the edge of the highway—silent, breathless—as if watching for someone they knew would never come.
It was late afternoon. Clay was exhausted. He knew the girl was too, but she would never show it, certainly wouldn’t say it.
He also knew that there would be only so much time before pictures and radio dispatches would be alerting the world to who he was, the fact that he had gone on the run from Hesperia.
“I think we need to find somewhere to rest up,” he said. He looked out to his right and left, seemed to be considering direction from intuition alone.
As an aside, almost to himself, he said, “Would make sense if I knew your name. That is one word you could say without upsetting too many folk.”
He looked at her. She looked back. She tried to smile but it didn’t come out so good.
“No?” he asked. “Okay. I was figurin’ you was maybe gonna be a nun or some such. Like you’d taken a vow of silence.”
Clay decided left and started walking. He hoped to find a barn, a shack, a shed—something long enough to lay down in with a roof over their heads.
The girl followed him—dutiful, implacable, silent.
A thousand yards from the road they came upon a place. The roof was sagging, but the walls were solid. A deserted storage barn, an intended home, he had no idea what purpose the building had served, but for tonight it would suffice. In back was a rain barrel with clean-looking water to the brim.
“This we can drink if we boil it first,” he told the girl. “It ain’t gonna be a comfortable night, but it’ll be better than sleeping out under the stars.” He looked to the sky. “And I have a feeling rain is coming.”
Inside was a stone floor, a broken chair, a table with three legs. Spiderwebs crisscrossed the corners and angles, and dust as thick as cloth was laid out on every surface. A collection of metal cooking pots were scattered around. Old cutlery, rusted and useless, a newspaper dating back four years, its pages nothing more than sepia-colored memories of things long-forgotten. Clay moved things about. He used the remnants of an old blanket to brush dirt and mouse droppings away from the side of the room, and then he told the girl to wash one of the metal pans.
“Scoop water out of the barrel in back. Don’t put the pan in the water itself. It’s clean enough and I don’t want it all dirty.”
She took the pan without a word, went out there and started.
Clay broke up the chair, kicked the remaining three legs off the table, stacked them in the fireplace beneath the chimney. He hoped the chimney wasn’t blocked with old nests and crap. Soon enough they’d find out. The newspaper, a few handfuls of kindling from outside the door, and he had the fire going. The chimney was okay. The room could cope with the smoke.
The girl returned with the pan.
“We’re going out,” he said as he took it from her.
He led the way and she followed. They spent a while gathering up broken cornstalks, those with heads still attached, and when they had an armful or two they went back inside. The heads went into the pan, the stalks into the fire, and soon they had the thing half-filled. Clay added water, set the pan near the edge of the fire and let the thing heat up. It boiled it up into a sticky mess and they wolfed it down while it was still too hot to taste. Clay shared out the last few items that he had taken from the convenience store. That was it. Now it was all down to what money they had, what money they could get. He counted out the coins. Seven dollars and forty-two cents. He took out the gun, the box of shells, and before he had a chance to stop her the girl had taken the gun and was holding it by the grip between her fingers so it pointed down to the floor.
Her eyes were questioning.
“Just in case,” Clay said. “In case those people come back.”
She returned the gun to him. She lay down on her side, her face turned away, and he heard her sigh.
Clay lay down too. The floor was cold and hard and unforgiving. Beside him was the kicked-out window, and through it he could see the sky darkening quickly, the nascent stars, the promise of thunderheads. He watched the wind move the clouds. He felt the hot fist of poor nourishment cramping his guts. Pay for this come morning, he thought, squatting in a bush someplace with my ass like a fresh bullet wound.
The rain came then—fast, relentless, hammering at the ground as if to make a point, as if to prolong some eternal argument between the dirt and the sky. Water channeled and roiled around the edges of the old
He closed his eyes for a moment, and then he felt her close up against him. Her body was cold and thin and awkward. She approached him for warmth, for the certainty that they would sleep better if they shared what heat they could muster between them.
In those last moments of wakefulness Clay Luckman wondered what had happened to him. He questioned the present, the past, and he realized that life had a way of preparing you for nothing at all. Tomorrow they would reach Tucson, and what was waiting for them there? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The authorities would be looking for him, and for her too he imagined. It would help greatly if he knew something—anything—about her. And if the police or the federal people got hold of Earl and Digger, God only knew what lies and calumny they would spew. Earl would more than likely tell the world that all the killing had been Clay’s doing, and then it would be Clay’s word against that of a convicted felon. Hell of a chance for fair judgment if that happened. Even as he lay there he imagined police cars crisscrossing the countryside, wireless announcements, his picture in the newspapers and on the TV. Fate and fortune had brought him here, and fate and fortune—he felt sure—had something else in store for him tomorrow.
It was barely evening, and yet Clay Luckman and Bailey Redman fell asleep to the sound of the rain and each other’s breathing, and it seemed after a while that one was indiscernible from the other.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tucson, “The Old Pueblo,” overwhelmed Elliott Danziger completely. Thirty-second largest city in the continental United States, bordered to the north by the Santa Catalina and Tortolita mountains, to the south by the Santa Ritas, the Rincons to the east, and the Tucson Mountains to the west. The city was breathtaking to him. Never had he seen such a place.
Near the old city center, right there at the corner of Stone Avenue and Broadway Boulevard, he pulled Gil Webster’s white pickup over to the edge of the street and sat there for a good while. He was angry. He was still scared. He was upset about what had happened with the girl back there at the house, but his shame and guilt had evolved into something closer to resentment. He resented her. That was how he felt. He even half-hoped she’d die. Or maybe have brain damage and spend the rest of her life having to be spoon-fed by cruel nurses. He knew also that now he was in trouble for himself and by himself. There was no Earl to cover for him. There was no Earl to blame it on. He had locked a man in his cellar, beaten a girl unconscious, and stolen a pickup. He also had a gun that belonged to the police and the proceeds of a major bank robbery.
He was also hungry, and he needed to eat. He had no shortage of money, but there was something so strange and new and paralyzingly huge about the place that he felt afraid to leave the vehicle. It took him a good fifteen minutes to feel centered and focused and oriented. He didn’t like to carry so much money on him, but he had no choice. He was not going to leave seven hundred bucks in an unattended car. He needed a change of clothes as well. The things he was wearing were grubby, sweat-stained, and there was blood in the treads of his shoes. He couldn’t look at it. The girl had made him feel ashamed, made him feel like a child. He wondered when she would come around, or when someone would find her, and if they would find the man in the basement too, and if …
It was all so many ifs, and regardless of everything blood was blood, and it wasn’t so smart to go walking around with evidence of your deeds on your footwear. He divided the money into four roughly equal parts, put two bundles of notes into his inner jacket pockets, the other two in the front pockets of his jeans. The gun was too difficult to conceal on his person, so it went under the driver’s seat. There were only four bullets. He thought of how to get more, and then was scared at the thought. Why would he need more? Because he was on the run, because he had hurt the girl … maybe even killed her? And then he thought of Earl, and what Earl had said, and he felt a sense of resolve amidst his nervous thoughts. He had to be a man. He had to make a decision and carry it through. He had to keep on going. He paused, and then he went for the advertisement in his back pocket. It was not there. Hell, it was not there! He checked the other pockets, knowing full well before he checked that it had gone.
Damn! Hell and damnation! That was important. That had been his goal.
And then he paused and thought for a moment. Maybe it was an omen, a portent. Maybe the fact that he had lost it was fate playing a hand. Clay talked about fate. Clay believed in fate. Maybe Clay was right. Perhaps the fact that he no longer possessed the picture meant that he had moved beyond seeing it on the page, and now he had to see it for real. That would make sense. Out of the imagination and into reality.
Yes. Of course. Eldorado. That’s where he was going. That’s where he’d been going for the past five years.
Digger locked up the pickup and took a walk, paying attention to landmarks as he went so as to find his way back when the time came. More people than he had ever seen crowded the streets. Music could be heard from bar doorways. Women sat talking in laundromats. Restaurants with lighted windows showed people laughing, eating, drinking, doing what regular people did on a Monday evening in Tucson. He felt self-conscious and out of place. He felt like a bohunk hick farmhand come to the big city. Well, howdy, y’all! He felt naive and unschooled in the nature of many things, and he started to resent the people who looked at him as he passed by.
Ten minutes and he found a small place on Sutherland Street. There were people his own age inside an adjacent record store. They were dressed up in skinny-legged pants and flat shoes in pastel colors. Some of the boys had on sweaters and ties. The girls had mountains of hair perched on their heads. They wore cosmetics, had long dark lashes, scarlet red lips, and necklaces and bangles and little purses that seemed too small to carry a pack of smokes. They danced in the store. They were provocative and coy. They looked like they were teasing the boys, and they knew what they were doing. Digger despised them immediately. They reminded him of the girl from the bank. She had slapped him. Jesus Christ almighty, she had slapped him! He calmed himself. He told himself that he had been in control. He told himself that she was stupid and fat and ugly anyway, that when he did it for the first time he was going to do it with someone pretty and smart and respectful.
In the diner he ordered meat and potatoes and beans. He ordered a glass of malted milk as well, and he took a couple of bread rolls from a basket next to the till to eat while he waited. He was one of three customers, the other two minding their own business—one at the counter, an old man with nothing more than a cup of coffee ahead of him, and then a younger woman at a table three down and one to the right. Digger smiled at her when he caught her eye. She smiled back, but there was a tension in that smile. She was in her twenties, late-twenties he guessed, and she had a flat and unremarkable face. He wanted to tell her that he was no threat, that she was not his type, but he knew well enough that spontaneous conversation with strangers was as welcome as hives.
He ate slowly. He did not circle his plate with his arm. There was no one here going to hurry him, no one going to steal his food. He started to relax. He was in the big city. He was in Tucson. Earl was more than likely dead. Clay was Christ-only-knew where, shit-fool-coward, useless half brother that he was. They would find Gil Webster in his basement and the girl upstairs in the bedroom. They would find the sheriff’s car in the barn out behind the property. They would realize that he had taken Gil Webster’s white pickup, and they would be looking for that. Best collect the gun and get another ride. Anything would do. Something inconspicuous, something that wouldn’t be missed for a while. He would give them the jump, take the lead, be running so far ahead of them that they’d never have a chance to catch him. And where would he go? That would be their question. Eldorado, that’s where. Somewhere they didn’t know about, and somewhere they would never think to look.
For now the details didn’t matter. Tonight he needed to find some new clothes, some new boots, somewhere to sleep, and then in the morning he would ge
He finished up his dinner, paid the check, left no tip. He looked once more at the unremarkable woman in back of the diner. Her eyes were empty and registered nothing.
Out on the street he headed back in the direction he’d come, stopping at an open-fronted market where jeans and tees and checked shirts were on sale. He bought what he needed, carried them away in a large paper bag. Boots too he found at another store, bought a pair of rugged, thick-soled lace-ups that would survive three Russian winters and a walk through the Ozarks. In the pickup he changed, put his old shoes and clothes in the paper bag and twisted the top tight. The gun went in his jeans waistband, the tails of the shirt to cover it, and then he wiped down the internal surfaces of the car, levered the door with his cuffs over his hands, and then locked up from without. He dropped the keys down a storm drain ten yards down Stone Avenue and didn’t look back.
Three blocks away he saw a young dark-haired woman carrying a bag of groceries out of a store. She was cute-looking, had that whole ponytail-hair-tied-up-behind thing going on. She wore short tight pants that reached her knees, flat shoes, a T-shirt that emphasized the curve of her waist and the substance of her breasts.
She looked good enough to eat.
Digger waited for her to make fifteen yards, and then he started to follow.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Ronald Koenig and Garth Nixon had confirmed the identification of Frank Jacobs by eight that evening. Yes, they had a pocketbook, a couple of things on his person that carried his name and address, but nothing substantive like a driver’s license or official ID card. So many times an ID had been assumed, and so many times that ID had been proven wrong. Substantiating his name had meant sending people to his home in Scottsdale, a good hundred miles or so north. What he was doing in Marana they did not know, and from what the Scottsdale field agents could tell them there was nothing unusual about Frank Jacobs’s home aside from the staggering prevalence of shoes. Jacobs’s Oldsmobile had been employed by the fugitives in Marana, and thence to Wellton for the abortive and murderous bank robbery. With the death of Earl Sheridan in Wellton, the remaining fugitive—this Clarence Luckman—had taken Jim Wheland’s car and made his escape.