Bad Signs Read online

  Neither Digger nor Clay argued. They sat in back of the pickup and waited. Clay wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say. He knew what was going on, he just didn’t know how bad it was until Earl came running from the back of the diner with blood on the tails of his shirt. Clay knew then that he had hurt Bethany, maybe even killed her. Bethany was done for, and that was a cert. Earl tucked the tails in before he climbed up, but that didn’t change the fact that Clay had seen them.

  Earl fumbled with the keys. He dropped them, retrieved them, got them in the ignition and revved the car. The pickup kicked a whirlwind of dust behind them as they cut away from the front of the diner and regained the highway. Earl had a fistful of dollars, some fives, maybe a ten or so, and he stuffed it in the dashboard. There was blood on the money too.

  “You kill her?” Digger asked.

  Earl slammed his foot on the brakes. The pickup careered to a halt in the middle of the road. Before Digger had a chance to double-take he felt Earl’s hand around his throat, felt the man’s weight bearing down on him, looked right back into his eyes. Those eyes were black and depthless, as if all the darkness of the world resided there.

  “One question is too many questions,” Earl said, and his voice was low-slung and gravelly. “You understand me, little man?”

  Digger said Yes with his eyes.

  Clay started; could recall with such clarity when Digger used to call him that.

  Little man.

  “Good ’nough,” Earl said.

  He released Digger’s throat, jammed the pickup into gear, and pulled away with a shudder.

  Clay looked straight ahead, dared not to look anyplace else, but then he felt Digger’s hand on his arm. The reassuring presence of his brother. Hang in there, he believed that gesture said. I’m okay. We’re gonna get through this. Somehow, someway we’re gonna get through this. Might even make it to Texas. Might even see Eldorado after all.

  Clay wanted to cry, but he did not dare. He was scared beyond belief. Everything had happened so fast, and now here he was—trapped in a car with his brother and this maniac—and the maniac had just killed some poor unsuspecting waitress for the sake of a handful of dollars.

  Out here it was different. Institutional rules did not apply in the wider world. For now Clay had no choice but to go along with this business, so he decided to keep his eyes and his words to himself. Earl Sheridan had killed Bethany the waitress. He’d killed her for money. For sex too, more than likely. The sex had lasted a minute, maybe two, the money couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty dollars all told. This was the kind of man he was traveling with, and Clay wondered if he and Digger were even going to see the other side of tomorrow.

  Still there was the reassuring grip of his brother’s hand on his arm.

  Clay kept his eyes forward. He didn’t want to risk showing any signs of weakness.

  They followed 62 and crossed into Arizona over the Colorado at Big River. By this time it was late morning and they had driven the hundred or so miles from Twentynine Palms without stopping. They connected with 72 at Parker and headed southeast. Earl wanted to get to the I-10 near Salome and then make a straight run into Phoenix.

  “Couple of hours and we’ll be in the biggest city you boys ever did see,” he said. “Times like this a city’s best. City has so many people you’ll never find but one of them at a time. Make it to Phoenix and we’re as good as gone forever.” He laughed like a jackass, though Clay didn’t tell him so.

  Behind them a number of miles a hubbub of activity surrounded the small roadside diner at the edge of Twentynine Palms. Black-and-whites had come south from Ludlow, northeast from Yucca Valley. Twentynine Palms’ sheriff, Vince Hackley, had been the first out there. Don Olson, owner of the Highway 62 Grill & Diner had called in an incident. Hackley knew Don, had eaten out at his place plenty, and when he got there he found the ordinarily levelheaded and sober guy a mess of nerves and hysteria. In the kitchen he learned why.

  Bethany Olson, for sure and certain one of the best-looking girls Twentynine Palms had ever known, was dead. Not only dead, she was gutted like a pig. From first inspection it seemed as if whoever had done this had set his mind to dividing her up three or four different ways. Her throat was cut—deep, like he had a mind to decapitate her. Perhaps growing frustrated at the difficulty of his task, he set about her torso and breasts, wide incisions that went a good two inches into the flesh. The upper thighs were also lacerated, her blouse shredded into a mess of wet, scarlet ribbons. Hackley went out front and called for reinforcements from the two closest towns, and he put a call into his dispatcher to get the county coroner from Desert Hot Springs. Next thing he did was go out and talk with Don Olson. The man was spotless. Not a speck of blood on anything but his shoes, and Hackley had some of that same blood on his own boots. Appearances indicated that Don Olson had done what he said: come home from the garage to find his wife exactly as Hackley had just seen her. Hackley didn’t doubt for a moment that someone had raped her. If you had an urge to do that to some girl, well Bethany Olson was the girl you’d want to do it to.

  The diner was cordoned off. The county coroner came down and started the unenviable task of controlling the crime scene and managing the body. Hackley and his two colleagues—Ed Chandler from Ludlow and Ethan Soper from Yucca Valley—began canvassing the area, looking for signs, clues, indications of who might have passed through here with murder in mind. Highway 62, all of a quarter mile away, had more than likely brought them in and taken them away. Hackley knew—more from intuition than experience—that the harder they looked the less they would see. There was nothing here, nothing to tell them who or why. Unless their man did some other thing, unless there was another incident that brought him to the attention of the police, then the likelihood of finding him was almost nonexistent. That was the rub down here. Small-town murders came in two flavors. First was domestic, familial, neighborly. It was obvious who did it because there was no one else who could have. Second came the unexpected. Never witnessed, always out of left field, as unexpected as weather. Three or four times in his quarter century he’d seen such things. Granted, none as violent and bloody as Bethany Olson, but he’d seen them. Robbery-homicides ordinarily, holdups and the like, one of them when he’d served in North Las Vegas back in the early fifties. Some schmuck had turned over a liquor store for little more than nineteen dollars, and Hackley’s partner—off duty at the time—had shot the man in the throat. Hell of a thing to die for.

  Big cities were different. Big cities there were always people who knew people, people who’d seen things, heard things, got word from so-and-so about such-and-such. Price you paid for the wealth of available information was the proportionately greater number of killings. You couldn’t have one without the other. Seemed to be the nature of things.

  So Vince Hackley was under no illusions. Don Olson didn’t cut up his own wife, he was sure of that. This was not a domestic matter. This was something else entirely.

  And whatever the hell it was, he hoped it had already left the state.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That night, in the outskirts of Phoenix, Clay Luckman knew that if he and Digger didn’t get away they were done for. That was as sure as sunrise.

  Aside from a brief stopover for Earl to buy a shirt from a store and discard the bloody one, their journey had been uninterrupted. Earl then dropped them off a hundred yards from a turnoff on the highway. For some reason Earl had figured on Digger being more reliable than Clay, so he’d told Digger to hold on to Clay and stay right where they were for ten minutes or so.

  “Down there is a motel. Whole bunch of cabins set in a half circle behind the main building. You wait here ten minutes and then come on down. I’m gonna get us a room, but if they see there’s three of us they’ll charge us three times. We’ll all sleep there tonight, and then in the morning we’ll head across Arizona into Texas or someplace.” He took his jacket and wrapped it around the shotgun. The revolver went in
to the waistband of his pants, and he tugged his shirt out to cover it. He drove on down toward the motel. Clay could sense him looking back at them in the rearview.

  “What the hell are we gonna do, Digger?” Clay asked.

  “I don’t know, Clay, I just don’t know. I was scared he was going to kill us, but I don’t think he will.”

  “He killed that waitress back there. You know that, right?”

  “I don’t know exactly what he did, Clay, and I don’t want to know. You seen how he was when I asked him …”

  “So what? You just gonna let him drag us all over the countryside until he gets tired of the company?”

  “Hell, Clay, I ain’t gonna let him do anything. This isn’t my doing, you know? I didn’t get us in this mess.”

  “And neither did I. All I’m saying is that we have to do something.”

  “And what would you suggest, you being the smart guy around here?”

  “Digger … Christ, I don’t mean it like that. I’m not blamin’ you for what’s happened. I’m just sayin’ we have to do something fast before his patience runs out, or before he gets the idea we’re slowin’ him down.”

  “Well, I don’t know, and right now the only thing we can do is go on down to that motel and see what happens.”

  Digger was right. But there was something else, something in Digger’s tone that unnerved Clay. It was almost as if Digger was defending Earl Sheridan. Surely that couldn’t be right? Surely Digger hadn’t gotten the idea into his head that Earl was one of the good guys here?

  “Digger … seriously … the guy’s a crazy one. He done killed that girl back there. He was already on his way to hanging for something else, wasn’t he?”

  Not a word of response.

  “Digger, I mean it. We gotta go someplace. We were gonna go to Eldorado. Let’s take off for Eldorado together, eh? Let’s us just do that and be done with him.”

  Digger was silent for a good three or four minutes longer, and then he got up and started down toward the motel. Clay watched him go. His heart was too heavy to bear. He felt the weight of conscience, the weight of responsibility, the weight of fraternity. If he left Digger alone with Earl, then Digger would be lost for good. Clay knew it, knew it with everything he possessed. He realized there was no choice now. He took a deep breath, he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. He took a step, and yet again another, and he followed on after his brother because there was nothing else he could do.

  In the cabin was nothing more than a flea-ridden bed, a ratty carpet, a tiny shower room with a sink and a toilet. It smelled like someone was buried underneath.

  Earl talked incessantly. Clay tried hard not to listen to what he was saying, but Digger seemed to hang on his every word. Clay told himself that Digger was merely ingratiating himself into Earl’s favors in order to preserve both of them. If Earl liked Digger, then Digger was going to make it through the other side of this. And if Earl liked Digger enough, then Digger would at least have some leverage on defending his younger brother. That’s what Clay told himself. What he believed was a mite different.

  The poisonous words came, and Clay did his best not to let the bitterness infect his mind, but it was hard. In amidst all the lies was sufficient truth to start the fire, and that fire seemed to be lighting up a spark in Digger’s eyes. Clay watched as Digger leaned in close, his shoulders down, his expression intent, as if here was all the wisdom of the world and he could not afford to miss a single word.

  “Folks respect you because they’re afraid,” Earl told him. “Wife doesn’t respect her husband because he buys flowers every once in a while. She respects him because she knows he’ll let fly if she doesn’t do what she’s told. Reason wives never leave violent husbands? It ain’t outta fear. I’ll tell you that much. It’s outta respect.”

  Digger’s eyes were wide, his ears wider, and he seemed to just soak it all up like a sponge.

  “Thing about being human is you know you’re going to die. That awareness is there inside you. Doesn’t matter what you do, how much money you have, how many people love you, at the end of it you’re going to die. One thing we have in common. Levels the field for us all.”

  Earl smoked Lucky Strikes, chained them one after the other, used the last to light the next. The room was thick with acrid clouds, the window cranked barely a half-inch. It was warm, too warm to be sat inside, but lessons weren’t over, and wouldn’t be for a while.

  “You hear these boys talk about killing someone. It’s unreal. It’s surreal. It’s like I wasn’t there. That’s all so much BS. Of course you’re there. More there than you’ve ever been. It’s the realest thing you’ll ever do, and that’s a fact.” Lighting another cigarette, and then, “Pain is the anvil upon which your personality is forged. Look at me. More pain in my life than a man can stand, but I got buckets of personality, and them buckets is spilling over. Hell, I got enough personality for three or four regular folk.”

  Digger seemed to take it all in, every word, every statement. The most dangerous thing about Earl Sheridan was his confidence. Confidence was nothing more than certainty. Confidence was simply saying something you believed in. Trouble was that those with impressionable minds took certainty and self-belief as truth. Digger’s mind had always been flexible. That was Digger’s downfall. Those who lacked certainty took others’ certainties as truths, however deceitful and shallow they were. The mind was like dough, and Earl Sheridan seemed set to leave his fingerprints all over it. Earl hated the world. That was obvious from the moment he opened his mouth. Clay had crossed paths with people like this before, at Barstow, at Hesperia as well. In such places he had acted as a buffer between Digger and such folks. Here it was different. Here there was no work party to distract Digger’s attention. Here there was no rigorous schedule that would put them side by side in lockdown for eight or ten hours at a time, during which time Clay could disinfect Digger’s thoughts and resultant erroneous conclusions.

  It was in that motel room that Clay began to see a small ravine between himself and his brother, and with each word, with each passing minute, he saw that ravine widening to a gulf.

  Earl Sheridan was a deranged and hate-filled man. If you looked too closely at that kind of hatred you’d go blind. Earl’s reasoning seemed no more substantial than childish spite. He spoke of his father, introduced him into the conversation with the words, “Boy, if there was ever a book about being an asshole, that man wrote it.” And Mr. Sheridan Senior occupied center stage for the next half hour. He did this, he did that, he did the other. He railed on Earl for speaking out of turn, for eating too much and eating too little, for walking too fast, too slow, for being stupid, smart-mouthed, simple, for sulking, for lying, for telling the truth. It was all a mess of contradictions, and if there was a grain of truth in what Earl was saying then it seemed no surprise that he came out the way he did.

  After it got dark they went out to eat. Earl stopped at a liquor store on the way. He bought a six-pack and a bottle of rye. He offered a can of beer to Digger, snatched it back as Digger reached for it, and then for a moment or two he played that back-and-forth You-can-have-it-no-you-can’t game until Digger was resigned in defeat. Only then did he give him the can. Earl seemed pleased with himself, pleased to bait a teenager and get the upper hand.

  “Share it ’tween you,” he said, “and drink it slow, ’cause you sure as shit ain’t getting’ no more.” Then he went on to explain that come tomorrow there would have to be some changes in the way things were going as he had little enough money for himself, let alone anyone else.

  “We’ll get some money someplace,” Digger said, holding the beer can like a prize, and the way he said it made it clear as daylight what he was thinking of.

  “Maybe so,” Earl replied as he pulled into the forecourt of a small restaurant with a red canopy and gold writing on the windows.

  When Clay got out he looked down the street. It went as far as he could see and just kept on going. And it was not the on
ly street in the place.

  Once inside, Earl ordered up a feast of things. Some rib-eyes, potatoes, greens, gravy, some corn bread, and other stuff. He talked while he ate. The liquor had put him in good humor, and there he was, going off fast and funny in four directions like a talk show host.

  Clay watched him. The man had about as much heart as a rattlesnake. He had a hundred different faces. He had layers and levels and facets. But Clay Luckman knew one thing—that however deep Earl Sheridan might go, whatever it was that lay at the heart of him was dead.

  Looking sideways at Digger he realized that both of their thoughts were for Earl Sheridan in that moment. Clay thinking, This man scares me more than death. Digger—his head angled and alert like a hunting dog—thinking, This man makes me laugh more than any man I’ve ever known.

  They were done eating by nine. Earl paid the check and left a two-dollar tip. He had drunk too much to drive, but Clay figured that if he was stopped he’d just shoot the cop anyway and what the hell. Either which way he wasn’t going to let anyone stop him getting where he was going.

  They made it back to the motel without incident. Earl gave them a blanket each, put them in the bathroom, and wedged a chair beneath the door handle.

  “I hear a fucking sound out of you assholes tonight I’m gonna come in there and blow your fucking heads off, you understand me?”

  There seemed to now be a light of admiration in Digger’s eyes, and that light didn’t seem to dim but a little. Perhaps he figured Earl was just being practical and businesslike. After all, he was a convict on the run. He was a man condemned to hang for the murder of Katherine Aronson. Now, if they caught him, they’d have to hang him for the waitress in that diner back in Twentynine Palms. Live like this and it behooved you to trust no one.

  Clay thought about waiting until Digger fell asleep and then trying to go it alone. Maybe he could gag Digger with a towel, hold him down, force him to listen to some sense. He reckoned he might possess sufficient strength to do such a thing. And then Digger would have to make a choice. Come with him, take a risk and see if they could get away, or stay with Earl Sheridan. Given enough time, Clay knew he could set Digger’s thoughts right again. He was just impressed with Earl, that was all. Earl was a tough guy. Earl was a man on the run. Earl had guns and liquor and money, and he could always get more of each. But if Clay could get through to Digger, appeal to him on every angle he could think of, then he might see the light of day and realize how he had been manipulated. Then there was the question of escape. Once out of the bathroom, Earl sleeping soundly, would they make it out and away before he awoke? Could they just smash through the bathroom door, both of them with all their strength, and rush at Earl where he slept? Two of them could maybe hold him down, use a towel or a pillow to suffocate him. Hit him hard and fast with the bedside lamp. Get one of them guns and just let him have it …