It Came From Del Rio: Part One of the Bunnyhead Chronicles (22 page)

I looked at the water I had my hand in, smelled it. Nothing. And then I saw past my hand, to the tracks right beside where I was standing. Someone hadn’t just drunk from this tank not long ago, had gotten in and waded in it. Maybe swam. Someone wearing new boots with an aggressive tread. Not the kind that go in a stirrup.

I nodded thanks to the cattle and wished them long, boring lives, then left my thermos right where I’d been dipping it full. It floated out to the center of the tank, the moss reaching for it, slowing it down. Thirty seconds later it was under, part of the ranch now. Part of the land.

So be it.

I was waiting for its last gulp of air to roll to the surface and pop — it had become a sudden little game, part of a deal I was trying to make — when a bullbat flitted down to pick some bug from my headlights. For an instant its shadow melted across the side of the tank and I shivered on the inside.

But Crazy Dave was still with me, talking steady from the cab. I came back to myself, remembered how to breathe. Tried to smile about how stupid I was being. For the cattle, yeah.

What Dave was talking about were the old-time CSI guys — old time like horse and buggy — how they used to think they could shine a light through the back of a murder victim’s eyeball, and then see, projected on the wall by that light, the last thing that eyeball had ever seen: the killer.

He’d got there off a monologue that had started with a comic book, I was pretty sure, but then had leafed down through the contents of his desk, to the freshest tabloids. Now he was doing a running commentary on the news items there. It was supposed to feel unscripted, I know, but still, standing at the edge of my headlights, a hundred-and-forty green eyes watching me, I was pretty sure Dave was taking me somewhere good.

As it turned out, it was back to the Jomar. Dave pronounced it like it was a Spanish word, but still, I knew what he was talking about: my father.

According to Crazy Dave’s unimpeachable sources — he always knew more about the tabloid stories than were actually in the tabloid — the case was solved, the killer practically caught, thanks to the lessons learned from those Victorian CSI guys.

Inset lower right was a sketchy rendering of the killer from the shoulders up. It was just the vaguest outline, according to Dave, but still, there was no denying that, standing up from the head like the twin shadows of feathers, there were two tall ears.

The caption was Jack the Rabbit, only to get to ‘Rabbit,’ they had to cross out Ripper. I pushed off from the stocktank, my lips pressed together. I was trying to reach the volume before Dave could make one of his jokes about this, because I didn’t want to have to hate him and not listen to him anymore. I almost made it, too. My finger was even on the dial.

I didn’t roll it back toward me, though.

Now Dave was explaining
how
the tabloid had obtained this artist’s rendering. It was from a television set the Jomar had thrown away. Apparently the image had been burned into the screen. Like a giant rabbit had sat on the edge of the bed for days, watching my father die. It made my eyes unfocus, lose themselves in the rough weave of my saddleblanket seatcover.

A
rabbit
?

I got in, pulled the door shut and backed the truck out, stepping down into the pair of ruts that had brought me here.

A
rabbit
?

It was a question I hadn’t even thought to ask Sanchez: ‘Speaking of that, you wouldn’t know if a bunny maybe’s the one who killed my father, would you?’

It was a tabloid, though. I had to remind myself. And Crazy Dave, too, “The Original Dryland Pirate,” known far and wide for his scurvy tongue and swashbuckling good looks.

Still, I was going to have to buy this issue, if it wasn’t already sold out on the shelf. Just to see if the television set the tabloid had all lost and lonely beside a dumpster wasn’t the same fake-wood, green-screened model I remembered. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted it to be or not.

Instead of dwelling on it, I tried to remember where the grocery store was in Uvalde. What I would buy the tabloid with would be blue Gatorade, I told myself. Because then it could just be something funny that had caught my eye, not specifically what I’d gone in for.

It was Uvalde, though. Nobody knew me in Uvalde. Yet. But then I could have said that about all of Texas back then, too. All of America. I may have even made the Misanthrope Morning show last week, for all I know. Become tabloid fodder myself. That’d be about right.

Maybe, even, that’s the only kind of immortality that’s real: for Crazy Dave to lean down to his mike, close his eyes, and intone your name once, so that it’s swirling up in the ionosphere forever.

It would let me be with my family, anyway. There are worse things. For all I know, though, the Misanthrope Morning show doesn’t even have a news segment anymore. Because of me, yeah.

But back to Crazy Dave that night, peeling open another tabloid, the false-seriousness in his voice as much as saying that this was an article he’d had a hand in, and was now showcasing for the true believers.

What he was talking about now was the Del Rio chupacabra. Apparently another had turned up. Not the one pictured here, that some intrepid photographer with a rapier wit had probably photographed, but a newer, fresher one.

It was only then that it hit me, that Crazy Dave drove a light-brown Chevette, not a skull and crossbones ship. I felt guilty almost, knowing that. Remembering how he’d scampered back to his front seat.

According to him, this new chupacabra wasn’t just some chemotherapied Collie dog, either, like the law enforcement officials were saying. It was the real thing. ‘Chemotherapy’ being the key word there, of course.

After getting the tabloid Dave had been talking about — it was the same television, no matter how I looked at it — I slept for four hours in a motel. And, yes, I flashed my badge at the desk to get the bed free.

I can pay it back, if that’s any kind of issue. But then I haven’t seen it listed on the charges against me, either. I suppose, in comparison to what I’m supposed to have done — it would be like citing a serial killer for jaywalking, just in case all that murder stuff doesn’t stick.

Not that I killed anybody.

But you know that. If this has gotten this far, that I’m reading it to you, then you know what I was doing up there. Never mind that you’re not even real yet, and that this isn’t either. If this goes some other way and this legal pad gets filed anywhere, it’ll be in my attorney’s file cabinet, under P, for privileged, or E, for eyes-only. Or, just burned. Better yet, left scattered on the surface of Town Lake.

I’m smiling now. I don’t know any other way to say that than just to say it.

If I wind up reading this out loud, though, I’ll have to try not to. But I’m sure my good attorney will have sliced out anything like that. The real irony, of course, would be to lock me way up in some tower. That doesn’t make me smile so much.

If my lawyer’s good and not stupid, then juries are predisposed to decisions which round a story out well, so the beginning and the end kind of match, balance each other out. The scales of justice, all that. Punishment fitting the crime, the more poetic the better.

Except I don’t want to be locked up.

Understand this, instead: the real closure for this story would be for me to walk out of here on some idiot technicality, like that officers on extended bereavement leave are immune to prosecution, or that, because ‘Romo’ isn’t my legal name, then that person being charged isn’t me, and whoever I am, I can just drift out the double doors in front, melt back into Austin.

That way I’d be free to say the goodbye to my real dad that I never got to say before. Or hello, yes. And everything else.

In Uvalde that day, I woke with the tabloid beside me on the bed. It made me want two showers, but then the water pressure made me want just one, please.

I slid my big key though the night drop slot, paid for a drive-through burrito — badges never work so well there — and without even thinking about it, filled up the front and back tanks at one of the places that took the state card. What I told myself to make it okay was that if I saw even one illegal, and mentally noted where he was standing, what he was wearing, then the gas wouldn’t be stolen.

Just driving slow down the main street in Uvalde, then, every third Mexican suddenly falling into the kind of lockstep that meant they were walking normal, that there was no reason for me to flare my brakelights, I earned every gallon, and probably built up enough credit to get me to Ozona and back, Crazy Dave in tow, to show me the Uvalde chupacabra.

Except I’m not stupid. That would be a seven-hour round trip.

What I did instead was skirt Uvalde in my truck until dark, looking for some road flares burning down, maybe a flag or a trail of pilgrims. When I didn’t find anything but coyotes nailed to fences, left-behind steers, and one tow-headed donkey I cupped water in my hands for, I tuned Crazy Dave’s station in. He wasn’t on for a few hours yet, but this was the DJ who led up to him anyway, and always pretended in obvious ways not to know their place on the band was getting pirated afterhours. I figured him and Dave had gone to high school together or something.

Once he dropped into a triple-play set, I pulled up to a payphone, called him.

“Crazy Dave?”

“More like Sane Roger, but thanks. I think.”

“I was just wanting to, y’know, make a donation.”

“‘Fill his till?’”

It was the way Dave always said it.

“This is where I call, right?”

“Listen, I can’t — how about this. His last name, it might rhyme with ‘handoval.’”

“He’s Mexican?”

“Why? You La Migra? Anyway, don’t call until after ten. His, um, landlady knocks off right after the early news.”

I thanked Sane Roger, dialed up Dispatch, had them run a name for me, get back with a confirmation on the phone number. ‘Unauthorized use of state resources,’ yeah. I don’t care. It’s not like I could call up the sheriff’s office in Uvalde, I mean. If I did, and word got back to Del Rio about it, Sanchez would know that I was just following the letter of what he’d wanted me to do, not the spirit. So it had to be Dave.

I left a message on his machine at five after ten, and he called me back a half hour later. The first thing he asked was if I was a cop? From the way I paused, I think he knew.

And, because I was the only human on either side of the border not to have a cell phone with me, I didn’t have any caller ID to nab him with, and I didn’t want to wake his mom, get him in trouble. So I could either circle Uvalde some more, or sit there by the payphone and pray, or wait for the next issue of Weekly World News. Or give up, yeah.