Blue Lonesome (9 page)

He didn’t think about pursuing her; he just did it. The powdery grit was like an abrasive in his already dry mouth and throat, making him cough steadily as he started the Subaru and turned it around. The hanging dust half obscured the track’s surface all the way to the valley road. He couldn’t do much more than crawl along. From the intersection the Jeep’s dust trail extended in caterpillarlike segments west toward the burnt hills. Heading home, he thought.

It took him more than ten minutes to reach her ranch, which put him at least that many minutes behind her. The fine white powder was settling in the ranch yard and he had a good look at the place as he drove through the open gate, past another warning sign: PRIVATE PROPERTY. KEEP OUT.

The Burgess ranch was a little larger than Anna’s, its buildings set against the fold where two naked hills came together. The spring that had dictated its location must have been a fairly large one; there were twice as many trees here, cottonwoods and tamarisks, and grassy spots and a vegetable garden that looked as if it got enough water. The house was of wood and native stone, with a broad chimney at one end and a covered porch along the front. The sun struck fiery glints from a squat silver Airstream house trailer set on blocks at an angle between the house and barn—an arrangement, planned or accidental, like the three points in an isosceles triangle. In a pole-fence corral adjacent to the barn, three lean horses stood languidly in the barn’s shade. Beyond was a pasture that contained cattle pens. And behind the house, chickens scratched inside a coop’s wire run and more sun glints came off windmill blades and a galvanized water tank like the one on Anna’s property.

The fences and the buildings were all well made, had once been well cared for, but there were signs of recent erosion and neglect: sagging fence poles that needed replacing, a broken windmill blade, a cracked and tape-repaired house window. Reverend Hoxie:
She and her son are alone out there now. Too large a place for the two of them to manage by themselves, really, but they can’t afford a full-time hired man anymore.
He wondered if the former hired man, Jaime Orozco, had lived in the Airstream trailer. He couldn’t see any reason for its being here except as a kind of one-man bunkhouse.

The Jeep was parked in front of the house. Messenger drew up alongside it. There was no one in sight, but he could hear a dog barking furiously inside the house. He started past the Jeep to the porch.

“That’s far enough, mister. Hold it right there.”

Male voice, young, and as hard as Dacy Burgess’s. Messenger stopped, turned slowly toward the sound of it. A gangly kid of fourteen or fifteen, sweat-stained cowboy hat shoved back on his head to reveal a mop of sun-bleached brown hair, had come out at the far corner. The rifle in his hands was similar to the one the woman had carried, and he held it with the same competence and authority. The sight of it and its aimed bore didn’t bother Messenger as much as it would have before the shooting at Anna’s ranch. He thought: Gun-happy people. Then he thought: No, that’s not fair. If I lived alone in a place like this, and had the recent history they’ve had, I’d be leery of strangers and keep a weapon handy, too.

The kid said challengingly, “What’s the idea chasing after my ma?”

“I wasn’t chasing her. Just followed her home, that’s all.”

“What happened? What’d you do to her?”

“Nothing. Didn’t she tell you about it?”

“Didn’t tell me anything. Just drove in all lathered and went inside.” His mouth worked as if he were about to spit. Instead he said, as though explaining something, “She’s never lathered.”

“I gave her some bad news.”

“Yeah? What bad news?”

“Lonnie,” Dacy Burgess said, “leave him be. I’ll handle this.”

She had come out onto the porch, was standing there in that ramrod posture. Her hands were empty now. She’d shed the broad-brimmed Stetson too; her hair, short and windblown from the open Jeep, a thick lock jutting like a topknot, was the same sunbleached brown as her son’s.

The boy, Lonnie, said, “Handle what? What’s going on?”

“Your aunt Anna’s dead.”

“What?” Nothing changed in his face. “When?”

“Three weeks ago in San Francisco.”

“So that’s it.” Then, flatly, “Well, good.”

“Lonnie. She killed herself.”

“Did she? Who’s this guy?”

“Never mind that now. Go on back to your chores.”

“You okay with him?”

“Yes. Go on now, I mean it. We’ll talk later.”

No argument from Lonnie. He lowered his rifle, slow-walked toward the barn without looking back.

Messenger said, “He must really hate her.”

“Well, he’s got cause. He loved his cousin.”

“Tess.”

“That’s right, Tess.”

“Do you hate Anna, too? Even now?”

“No. Maybe I should, but I don’t.” She ran a hand through her hair; the topknot bounced back up again. “I shouldn’t have run off on you that way.”

“It’s all right. I understand.”

“Do you?”

“The news hit you pretty hard and you needed time to recover.” Time to cry a little, too: Her eyes looked red and a little puffy, even though she’d washed her face afterward. “You’ll want to hear the rest of it. That’s why I followed you.”

“Might as well know. Come inside.”

She led him into the house. On one side of a narrow hallway was the kitchen, on the other a living room with plain furniture, Indian rugs, books on homemade shelves; no television set, but a home computer on a desk. The computer seemed out of place, anachronistic in these surroundings, though of course it wasn’t. He wondered what she used it for.

It was not quite as hot in here; a noisy rooftop swamp cooler stirred the air sluggishly. Over the rattle of the cooler, the dog’s frantic barks seemed to thud like solid things hurled against a wall. “That’s Buster,” she said. “Doesn’t like strangers any more than we do. Go on into the kitchen. I’ll settle him down.”

The kitchen had an old-fashioned look that appealed to him, dominated by a huge black cast-iron cookstove—the kind that sold in Bay Area antique stores for upward of two thousand dollars. A bulky refrigerator-freezer was the only newish appliance. A dinette table sat next to the window with the cracked pane; as he drew out one of the three chairs, the dog’s barking cut off into a shrill whine and then silence. Half a minute later Dacy Burgess reappeared.

She took glasses from a cupboard, a jug of ice water from the refrigerator, and brought them to the table. “You look dry,” she said. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks.”

She sat down and watched him drink thirstily, not touching the glass he’d poured for her. Up close and without the broad-brimmed Stetson, she bore a faint resemblance to Anna. The same facial bone structure, the same pale gray eyes. But her eyes were full of life, even dulled as they were at the moment. He wondered if Anna had been a woman of mood and temper and passion once too, long ago, and decided that she probably had.

“I’m sorry about your sister, Mrs. Burgess.”

“You already said that.”

“I want you to know I mean it. Really very sorry.”

“So am I. Now Lonnie’s all the family I’ve got left.”

“What about your husband?”

“I don’t have a husband.”

“Lonnie’s father …?”

“Him. Long gone, and good riddance.”

He started to say, “I’m sorry,” again, bit the words back. Meaningless. And she wouldn’t want to hear them anyway.

She pinched a pack of Marlboros from her shirt pocket, lit one and coughed out smoke, grimacing. “Shit, that tastes awful. I’ve been trying to quit but it’s not easy. Not when you’ve had the habit more than half your life.”

“No, I guess it isn’t.”

“Don’t smoke yourself?”

“Never have, no.”

“Smart,” she said. Then, “What was Anna to you?”

“Somebody I wish I’d known better.”

“She didn’t make friends easy.”

“We weren’t friends.”

“Bed partners?”

“Not that, either.”

“No, you’re not her type. Only man she ever wanted was that son of a bitch she married.”

“Dave Roebuck.”

“God’s gift to women, to hear him brag on it. We sure could pick ’em, Anna and me.” She sucked in more smoke, made another face and exhaled gustily. “So you met her in Frisco.”

“We lived in the same neighborhood. Ate every night at the same café.”

“Surprised me at first, to hear that’s where she went.”

“You had no idea she was living there?”

“Before you told me? No. Not a word from her since she up and left here. I figured she’d gone somewhere in Nevada or Arizona. Born and raised in the desert—desert rats usually stay close to home. More I think about it, though … makes some sense that she’d head for a city. Get as far away from here as she could, in miles and surroundings both. Frisco was the only city she ever visited that she liked.”

That isn’t why she went there, Messenger thought abruptly, with an insight so clear he had no doubt it was true. Contraction of self in the city: easier there to wrap loneliness and despair and resignation tight around yourself, weave a smothering cocoon of it all; easier then to put an end to the pain. Anna either thought that out or intuited it at some level. In any case, she went to San Francisco to die.

“Just how well did you know her, Jim?”

“Hardly at all,” he admitted. “I tried to talk to her once but she didn’t want any part of me or anyone else. She’d cut herself off from all human contact.”

“Never even had a conversation with her?” Dacy Burgess squinted at him one-eyed; smoke from her cigarette had closed the other one. “Then why’d you come here? Beulah’s a long drive from Frisco.”

“It’s on the way to Las Vegas. I’m on vacation and I thought … I wanted to find out about her, her real name, some idea of why she took her own life. And if she had any relatives.”

“What do you mean, her real name?”

“She was living under an assumed name. She died alone, without leaving a note, no explanation of any kind, and the police weren’t able to trace her. That’s why you weren’t notified of her death.”

“How’d
you
trace her, if the police couldn’t?”

“There was a book with a Beulah Library stamp among her effects.”

“Yeah? How’d you get a look at her effects?”

“If I tell you that you’ll think I’m crazy.”

“I about half think it already.”

“She fascinated me,” he said, “from the first day I laid eyes on her. I’ve never seen anyone sadder or lonelier.”

“And you just had to find out what made her that way.”

“Yes. Her death bothered me more than it should have. I talked to the police and then I went to see the manager of the building where she lived. Her belongings are stored there. I … well, I paid to look at them.”

“Paid?”

“I told you you’d think I’m crazy.”

She studied him for a time. “Not married, right? No kids, no woman?”

“What does that have to—”

“Takes lonely to know lonely,” she said.

Yes it does, he thought. And we’re both sitting here looking at loneliness, aren’t we? Anna’s sister in more ways than one.

“Well, now you know the truth about her,” Dacy Burgess said. “Some of it, anyhow. People in town told you all about the killings, right? Must have, for you to find your way to what’s left of her ranch.”

“I went to see Reverend Hoxie at the Church of the Holy Name.”

A mirthless smile bent her mouth at the corners. “The good Reverend. He doesn’t know the whole story. Good thing for him he walks around with blinders on half the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“You meet his daughter? Maria?”

“Yes, I met her.”

“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is. …”

“Dave Roebuck thought so, too.”

“Oh,” Messenger said. “So it was like that.”

“Just like that. Maria Hoxie and half a dozen others I could name. That bastard would’ve humped a snake if somebody’d held its ears. Can’t blame Anna for blowing his head off with a load of number two shot. Not
him
, you can’t blame her for. Tess is another story. What she did to Tess … she’ll burn in hell for that.”

“You’re convinced she was guilty of both murders?”

“Guilty as sin.”

“But she never stopped claiming she was innocent.”

“No. Swore it to me on a Bible.”

“Jaime Orozco believed her. Why didn’t you?”

“You talk to Jaime?”

“No.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Only what Reverend Hoxie told me.”

“Which was what? Jaime’s the only person in Beulah who never doubted her for a minute? Well, that’s right. He’s got a heart big as a bucket and he never had a bad thought about anybody, except Dave Roebuck. He’s known Anna and me all our lives. He doesn’t believe she did it because he doesn’t want to believe. Just like you, huh?”

Messenger said, “What I can’t believe is that a mother, a caring mother, would crush her daughter’s skull with a rock. And then put different clothes on her and the body into the well. And then swear her innocence and grieve so hard she could barely function.”

“Well, maybe you never heard of catathymic crisis.”

“No. What’s that?”

“Term in forensic psychology. Describes a person who kills somebody they’re close to and still grieves for the victim, same as if they were innocent. Doctor I know in Tonopah told me about it. Catathymic episodes start with anxiety and depression over emotionally tense relationships and end up with a belief that the only way out is murder. Could be that’s how it was with Anna.”

“Where her husband’s murder is concerned, yes, I can see that it might be. But her daughter? Her relationship with Tess wasn’t emotionally tense, was it?”

“Oh, hell, she could’ve thought so. Part of the same psychosis.”

“It still doesn’t seem right to me.”

Dacy Burgess stabbed out the remains of her cigarette with enough force to make sparks and ash fly. “Okay, then, here’s another explanation. She went plain old batshit crazy and afterward she repressed the whole thing. Couldn’t remember doing any of it, couldn’t face up to it in her own mind, so she convinced herself she didn’t do it.”

“Your doctor friend provide that theory, too?”