Fortunes of the Dead (23 page)

The house was turquoise and rust where it used to be turquoise and white, and had been top of the line in the late seventies. Stacked concrete blocks served as the front steps, and Adrianne had to take my arm and lean on me heavily to make it up and into the trailer.

Inside, a radio played Allison Krauss, and the stench of Marlboros was more like an assault than a smell. Everyone was in the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a long bar. A woman on that divide between slender and emaciated sat on a stool with her head tilted back into the kitchen sink, and an overweight blonde with a blue smock over a white tailored shirt and loose jeans was massaging red dye into her hair.

The woman with her head in the sink held a burning cigarette between her fingers. “Is that you, Adrianne?”

“Yes, my dear, but don't get up.”

The woman giggled. “I wasn't going to.” Her voice had the husky edge of a long-term smoker.

“I've brought a friend. Lena, that's Amy with her head in the sink.”

“Better than in the oven,” Amy said. She waved the cigarette. “How are you?”

“And that's Milly there at the sink.”

She looked at me over her shoulder. “I'm learning salon techniques and Amy is my guinea pig.”

“Don't believe her,” Amy said. “She's been doing my hair since high school.”

Amy pronounced hair like
har
.

A young woman in her mid-twenties was setting out acrylic nails, red polish, little containers and sponges and a tiny professional drill. She had long black hair with a streak of white. She stood up and shook my hand.

“Good to meet you, I'm Elyse.”

“But we call her Skunk,” Amy said.

“Drown her, will you, Milly?” Elyse sat back down at the table. She took one of my hands and shook her head. “A biter?”

“Not usually.”

“Want your nails done while you're here?”

“That's okay.”

“Come on, we've got time. Milly still has to cut and dry and God knows what else to Amy's hair. Sit right there.” She pointed to a metal chair.

Adrianne leaned against the kitchen counter. “Go ahead, Lena. I hear it's better than therapy.”

I knew I'd never find Joel getting his nails done while interviewing a background witness, and I wondered if that made me better or worse.

“We've all been wanting to meet you,” Amy said.

“That's true.” Elyse was looking at the size of my nail beds and matching each one to a white acrylic nail. “You sure have teeny hands. Sit down, hon, take the load off.”

Milly looked at me over her shoulder. “We heard all about you from Adrianne and—”

“
Milly
. No names.”

“Sorry. Anyway, we heard all about you.”

“Are you working on a case?” Elyse asked. She cut the tip off a small bottle of glue, applied it to the edge of a white nail, and pressed it in place over my chewed-up nail.

“I'm here for your help,” I said.

“Help with what?” Milly asked.

“Information. On Cory Edgers.”

Amy lifted her head out of the sink.
“Cory Edgers?”

Elyse applied glue to the base of another white nail. “You've surely come to the right place.”

Amy McAlister's bustline had lost a certain amount of magnificence with severe weight loss. She sat at the table with a towel wrapped around her head, and though her face was drawn and angular, tightened by years of heavy smoking, she still had a certain prettiness that would stay with her forever. The cheekbones were classic, proportions nicely symmetrical. She had a bon vivant presence at odds with her air of being a woman with significant personal demons. There were books on the kitchen table—computer programming, French II, Algebra II, and trigonometry. A stack of spiral notebooks lay beneath. Fifteen years of addiction is a hell of a thing to fight, but Amy McAlister seemed like a woman who could pull it off. She had a cigarette in one hand, another burning in an ashtray, and an open bag of Skittles candies in front of her on the table. Sugar and nicotine to keep the cravings away.

“Cory Edgers loved me like you think you want a man to love you when you're a little girl.” Amy glanced around the small kitchen, making sure she had everyone's attention.

It always happens this way. Interview someone, and they are reluctant to talk at first, but then the pleasure of being listened to, really listened to, begins to kick in and the next thing you know you can't shut them up. Amy McAlister clearly liked the limelight. This was going to be good.

“I had a crush on him since I was in junior high school, and he
literally
did not know I existed. I didn't have a lot of friends then, just one or two really close girlfriends. I wasn't shy, but I wasn't one of the cool kids, and I stayed out of the cliques. And then I grew boobs.” Amy giggled. The sound of it made you smile. “One day I was a triple-A training bra, and the next a thirty-two D. My mama like to have a heart attack. Part of her was proud—the women on her side of the family had always had big
bosoms
, was how she put it. But we had to special order my bras, and suddenly boys started calling, and she went from glad I was making friends, to worried that the friends were all male.

“And I loved every minute of it, let me tell you. Lot's of girls don't like the attention, and I can understand the viewpoint, but it just wasn't me. I wore tight little T-shirts that stopped right over my belly button and I could walk down the halls and
turn
those heads, and I liked it, it made me feel powerful.”

“You're an exhibitionist, Amy,” Elyse said.

“Don't I know it.” Amy took a long drag from her cigarette and blew smoke out of her mouth slowly, with a satisfied ecstasy that made me want to light up a Marlboro myself.

“I wasn't stupid, either. I knew it wasn't
love
they was wanting, but honey, my hormones were kicking in, and it wasn't
love
I wanted myself. Oh, Lord, boys that age—they don't know a lot, but there's something to say for enthusiasm.”

Elyse shook her head, cheeks going pink, but Milly laughed out loud.

Amy squinted her eyes. “But the one boy I wouldn't have sex with was Cory Edgers. Tell you the truth, I didn't like him once he started noticing me. I thought he was boring. He was so regulated, so precise, everything had to be just so. And Mister Proper. Ask you for a date, tell you what time he was picking you up, and what time he was taking you home. He double-booked, too, and I didn't put up with that. He'd take one girl out from six to nine, the other from nine to twelve, and didn't care if both of them knew it. I must have turned him down a dozen times.

“But Cory, now, is the kind of man who can't stand being told no. The more I told him to go away, the more he wanted to date me. So I made up all kinds of
rules
for him. Like he had to wear a certain shirt, and get his hair cut a certain way, and eat what I told him for lunch, just to show me how much he really wanted to take me to a movie. And then when he'd do everything I told him to do, I'd call and cancel the date.”

“You dog,” Milly said.

Adrianne pushed away from the kitchen counter and settled into a chair. “Better listen to her, Milly, it wouldn't hurt to give Mark a little shake-up.”

“I don't do that kind of manipulation,” Milly said.

Elyse used a pair of scissors to cut most of the length off the glued-on nails. “And that's why you spend every Saturday night just sitting on the couch watching the TV.”

Milly rolled her eyes.

This was a conversation that could last a year. I looked at Amy, who was lighting yet another cigarette. “So how did Cory finally get you to go out with him?”

“He took me horseback riding. He found out from my cousin that I loved horses, and that was the one thing I couldn't turn down. I mean, he did his homework. That's Cory all over.” She set the Marlboro in the ashtray, grabbed the bag of Skittles and passed them over to me. I took as many as I could fit into my free hand and passed them back.

“You know, Cory really was good to me. We'd still be married if it hadn't been that I just didn't want to settle down, you know? Because when Cory really loves you, he will do anything for you. But I drank and I run around on him a lot, and then I got pregnant. And when I miscarried the baby, Cory just give up on me. He wanted a family and losing that baby broke his heart. He blamed my drinking, you know, and smoking and being wild, and he was probably right. He's funny. He really did love me, but when he turned, that was it. He could barely stand to look at me after that. Didn't want a thing to do with me. And as far as I was concerned, it was a relief. I never did love him, not really. But he provided good, and he handled things for me, and it's nice sometimes to be looked after. It's just that when he does, he's got to have things his way. And let's face it, I'm an alcohol addict—the only thing I loved was Jim Beam.”

“So you miss him ever?” Elyse said. “You wish you stopped drinking before the marriage broke up?”

“Can't quite put my finger on why, but I think the relationship between me and Cory would have been over a whole lot sooner if I'd been sober. But actually, the marriage ain't officially over. We never got a divorce. We meant to, we just never did get around to it.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

Janis always tucks her hair in a John Deere ball cap when she goes to the meetings. She doesn't like the way the men look at her when she wears it down—long blond hair gives them thoughts she does not want them to have, not around her, anyway. Not that any of them would touch her. She is the liaison—she is the Rodeo Assassin's “woman,” because Rodeo is too smart, too careful, and too mysterious to come to the meetings himself. But the word to the wise is that he is out there, watching.

It is dark out and very late. Nobody sees her leave.

It's a long drive. She makes it just as the sun comes up. She does not like to meet in the dark. Daylight is better, so they know she sees their faces.

There are four of them today. The spokesman, the one who stands a little in front, the one the others look to, has a gray crew cut and a smile like milk gone bad. He has a Smith & Wesson .38 tucked into the back of his pants. Janis smiles a little. She knows at least five true stories of people who carried a gun tucked into the back of their pants and shot themselves in the ass. Which is all these guys are good for. She hates them as much as she hated the Enemy.

They are all of them part and parcel of the whole thing. Every one of them had a role in Emma's death, from the cult members, to the Feds who would not help her when she asked, to the ones who wound up burning the whole thing down and ruining any chance of a happy ending in her life.

She is honest enough to know that she has no idea if she'd have handled Waco any better, once everything got out of hand. Too many bosses, too many opinions, too many rulebooks written by sideline experts. But she does know there didn't have to be a Waco. She does know she'd tried to tell them, all of them; she went for help and no one listened. She tried the local police, the Texas Rangers, the FBI, and the ATF. By the time she got to the ATF they were expecting her—just another nutcase from the cult fallout. We can't help you, I'm sorry, go home. She wonders sometimes what set the whole thing off, what turn of events turned the federal guns at long last on David Koresh and Mount Carmel? What took them so long?

Janis finds the survivalist groupies predictable, thus useful. All of them watching each other in their own bizarre universe of fanaticism, stupidity, surveillance, national security, and pissing contests. It is a pleasure to use the one to bait the other.

There's a new guy today. Janis doesn't like him. He talks too much, and he looks at her, which he thinks she doesn't notice. She wonders if he is a cop. He is too tall, too young, too pulled together and too buff to belong with the beer bellies and blowhards that made up the usual suspects. He seems a little stupid for any intelligent law enforcement agency to send undercover, but hell, nobody's perfect.

Lately Janis thinks of finding a little place near home, and just living quietly, riding a horse again. She has saved almost all of her money, and she knows that one of these days there will be a cop or a Fed she doesn't spot. She is prepared. And, being Janis, she is not afraid. The last Fed had been good, and gotten closer than anyone. The woman had looked like one of the usual types, a girl with big hair, tight jeans, and a hubcap belt buckle, hanging around the cowboys. She called herself Candy.

Janis had taken care of Candy on a Saturday night after the last show, and before the cowboys had their Sunday morning coffee.

She pulls a sealed envelope out of her jacket pocket and sets it down on the ground. The rule is they can't pick it up until she leaves. The only reason she made the rule was to have a rule. Dealing with Koresh taught her a few things.

Crew Cut looks at the envelope, then looks at her, and licks his lips. “Hey, girl, does he tell you the name?”

Janis does not like being called “girl.”

“I bet you look in that envelope, don't you? Just so you know? I bet you can't help but look.”

“Who told you to talk?” Janis asks. Even from several yards away she can see his complexion grow darker.

“It will happen in the next thirty-eight to forty-two hours,” Janis tells them. “Make your first broadcast at midnight.”

Janis turns abruptly and gets back into her truck, aware that she's added another chapter to the Rodeo Assassin Legend. Like all legends, this one has elements of fact and fiction. There isn't a “he” and Janis is herself the assassin.

She drives away, well aware that the buff guy has memorized the details of her truck. Except, of course, it isn't her truck. It belongs to one of the tourists spending the night near the fairgrounds, and Janis made sure he had enough Jack Daniel's the night before so that there is plenty of time to get the truck back before the tourist knows it's gone.