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  Funny how he’d left a dead-end, inbred town stuck out in Southern bayou country, only to end up in an equally moribund and isolated desert community. If anything, Los Lobos was even more depressing than Choctaw County. At least the landscape surrounding Seven Devils looked alive.

  Still, he had to admit that the nearby Coyote Mountains were indeed awesome, rising from the desert floor like the hackles of an angry beast. The scenery in Choctaw County was flatter than a pancake. Hell, the levee was the closest thing to a hill he’d ever seen before going off to college. But proximity to such breathtaking vistas didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the denizens of Los Lobos County, at least as far as he could tell.

  Suddenly a meaty finger prodded his shoulder. “Hey—Hey, you.”

  It was the biker who owned the Harley he’d seen parked outside. He was dressed in a pair of grease-stained jeans, an equally dirty T-shirt and wore a pair of steel-toed boots. His beer belly hung over the top of his jeans, exposing several inches of hairy midriff. That and the drooping mustaches he wore made him look like a walrus. He reeked of grease, gasoline, whiskey, and body odor.

  “What’s fuckin’ wrong with you?” the walrus growled. “Can’t you fuckin’ read?”

  Skinner looked at the bartender, whose eyes refused to meet his, then turned to address the biker. “Beg pardon?”

  “Don’t you get fuckin’ cute with me, asshole!” the biker snarled, leaning even further into Skinner’s face. His teeth were a grayish yellow color. “You saw the sign on the fuckin’ door, didn’t ya?”

  “Well, I—Uh—”

  “Are you a fuckin’ injun?”

  “No.” He said it without even thinking. It was an automatic response from nineteen years spent thinking of himself as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

  “Then you must be a fuckin’ dog!” the biker laughed as he punched Skinner in jaw, knocking him to the floor.

  He lay there in the sawdust, too dazed to do anything except stare up at his attacker. The biker turned and took the half-finished beer from the bar and up-ended over Skinner’s head.

  “You shouldn’t be messin’ with the firewater, Chief! You know that ain’t allowed! Now get your lousy prairie nigger ass back to the reservation before I kick it back for you!”

  The two locals playing pool paused their game as the jukebox switched from Hank Williams Jr. to Hank III. The bartender still refused to look at Skinner, instead focusing his attention of the glasses he was drying.

  “You fuckin’ deaf, Tonto? I said leave!” The walrus-bellied biker snarled as he bent down to grab Skinner by the shoulder.

  Maybe it was a combination of the frustration and stress from the last two weeks—or perhaps he’d simply had enough of being treated like shit. Whatever the reason, Skinner didn’t care if the bastard outweighed him by sixty pounds and could flatten him like a sack of overripe tomatoes. He had had enough of being treated like shit. He came up like a jack-in-the-box, ramming his head into the biker’s walrus gut. His adversary doubled over, clutching his midsection as he gasped for air. Skinner then brought his knee into the other man’s face as hard as he could. The biker promptly forgot about his beer belly and fell to the floor clutching his nose, swearing through blood and broken teeth. As Skinner stared down at the biker sprawled at his feet, the blunt end of a pool cue made contact with the back of his head. And everything went black.

  “… to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  The next thing Skinner knew he was lying facedown in a mixture of sawdust, blood, urine and spilt beer with his arms pinned behind him and someone’s knee wedged into the small of his back. Judging from the pain that radiated from every part of his body, his attackers had worked him over pretty good while he was unconscious. And going by the smell, they also pissed on him for good measure.

  “Come on, buddy. It’s time you paid the judge a little visit.” The deputy helped Skinner to his feet by yanking on his cuffed wrists. It was all Skinner could do to keep from hollering in pain.

  “Am I being arrested?” he asked thickly.

  The deputy and the bartender shared a smirk. “Catches on pretty quick, don’t he?”

  “What’s the charge?” It was difficult to come across as an indignant taxpayer while handcuffed and reeking of beer and urine, but he still gave it his best.

  “Drunk and disorderly.”

  “But I didn’t start it—”

  “Tell it to the judge, kid.”

  The deputy led Skinner to the waiting cruiser parked outside the bar. There was no sign of the Harley or the two pickup trucks that were there earlier. It was twilight and the sky was rapidly turning purple as the sun sank behind the nearby mountain range. The deputy pushed Skinner’s head down and forward as he helped him into the back seat. Somewhere in the gathering dark, a coyote chorus took up its song. It sounded like the laughter of mad women.

  The Los Lobos County Jail proved to be tiny. After being booked at the front desk, Skinner was released into the holding tank and told to wait. His only other companion in the cell was an elderly Navajo who was so drunk Skinner had to look twice to make sure he was breathing. After twenty minutes, the deputy who’d arrested him appeared. “Okay, Cade: time for your phone call.” He unlocked the holding tank and Skinner shuffled out.

  “Do I get to see a doctor, too?”

  The deputy gave him a precursory glance. “You don’t look that bad off to me.”

  Skinner had to admit that, outside of a dull ache here and there, his earlier pain had disappeared. He’d always healed fast as a child and had rarely taken ill, even when the measles and mumps had swept through the Choctaw County public school system.

  The deputy walked Skinner to the end of the corridor, and then motioned to a pay phone mounted on the wall. “Here’s your fifty cents. Knock yourself out, kid.”

  Skinner hesitated for a long moment, rubbing the coins between his fingers, and then slid it into the slot. “Operator, I’d like to make a collect call to Lucas Blackwell, area code 870-555-3962.”

  He hated calling Luke this way, but what else was there for him to do? He was the closest thing to family Skinner had left. He didn’t really expect Luke to make his bail; he just wanted someone, somewhere to know where he was and what was happening to him.

  The phone rang five times, then six. On the seventh ring someone picked up the receiver. “Hello?” Although the voice was distorted by distance and static, he realized it wasn’t Luke’s.

  The operator’s abruptly came on the line. “I have a long-distance person-to-person call for Lucas Blackwell. Will you accept the charges?”

  “This is Phelan, Luke’s cousin. Skinner, is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me! Phelan, can you put Luke on the phone?”

  There was a long pause and then the operator came on the line again. “Sir, will you accept the charges?”

  “For God’s sake, Phelan!” Skinner shouted. “Say yes!”

  “I’ll accept the charges,” the farmer said reluctantly.

  “Phelan, where’s Luke?” Again the uncomfortable silence. “Phelan? Are you there? Speak up!”

  “I thought you’d heard,” Luke’s cousin replied slowly. “I reckoned that was why you was callin’ …”

  “Heard about what? Phelan, what’s happened? Where’s Luke?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Skinner stared at the receiver as if he could see Phelan’s cow-eyed, slab-like face in the ear piece. “Dead? How?”

  “Shot himself. We found him yesterday evening, stretched out on the bed, dressed in the suit he married your mama in. He stuck the shotgun in his mouth and—well, you get the picture. We’re burying him Saturday. Can you make it back in time for the service? Hello?”

  Skinner hung up the phone without another word.

  Chapter Six

  The buzz of the after-hours check-in bell woke Leon Sykes out of a sound sleep, yet again. He emerged from his apartment an
d stumped toward the night registry, a small cubicle that resembled a drive-up bank teller’s booth that faced the parking lot. He rubbed his eyes and peered through the bulletproof glass at the couple waiting for him. They were trash, of course. Hell, all he had to do was look at ’em to know they were no good, especially the guy. Assuming anything with hair that long could be called a ‘guy’. The woman had enough makeup on her face to hide everything from acne scars to five o’clock shadow and wore a skin-tight red sheath that stopped just short of flashing beaver. She giggled as she wriggled against her companion, a young punk with waist-length hair that looked almost white.

  “We want a room,” the punk said, his voice was distorted by the speaker into something like the snarl of an animal.

  Sykes put a registration card and ballpoint pen into the hopper on his side and punched a button. “That’ll be thirty dollars plus a five-dollar key deposit. Thirty-five dollars total. Please fill out the card.”

  As the punk fished inside the pockets of his leather jacket, Sykes noticed that the sleeves raggedly ended at the shoulder, as if chewed off by a dog. The younger man tossed a fistful of wadded bills into the hopper and then scribbled a signature on the card. As he did so, Sykes noticed a tattoo shaped like the head of a wolf on the top of his left hand. After he took the money, Sykes passed a keycard back through the machine. Meanwhile, the bimbo continued to rub herself against the punk like she was trying to start a fire without matches.

  The punk grunted something and headed in the direction of the motel units, his lady friend in tow. Sykes watched them go, trying to decide whether he was envious or disgusted.

  He went back to bed and completely forgot about the lovebirds until ten o’clock the next morning, when Juanita the maid rushed into the front office, babbling hysterically in Spanish. Once he got her calmed down enough to understand what she was saying, he hung the ‘Sorry We’re Closed’ sign in the door of the lobby and hurried to check out Room Three-Sixteen.

  Juanita’s linen cart stood outside the open door, right where she’d left it. Swallowing hard, Sykes steeled himself for what might be inside. In the six years he’d spent as the owner-operator of a hot-sheets motel, he’d seen a lot of nasty stuff. It was his learned opinion that people did shit in cheap motel rooms they’d never dream of doing in their own homes.

  As he stepped into the room, he thought someone had put red sheets on the bed. The smell of blood was so strong he had to breathe through his mouth to keep from gagging. There were leather thongs tied to the headboard and the lamp on the bedside table lay on its side, its bulb smashed. There were words scrawled in blood on the wall opposite the bed. They were stilted and uneven, as if written by a deranged child: HEALTER SCELTER, PIGGIES, and, most chilling of all, HELP.

  Sykes scanned the room for some sign of the woman he’d seen the night before. Although there was blood—and plenty of it—there was no sign of a body. He checked the bathroom, expecting to find her mutilated corpse in the tub, but all that was there was a blood-caked towel. There was no trace of the woman in the red dress. It was like she’d been swallowed whole—hair, guts and all.

  The cops were there in within five minutes. Forensics made the scene in under a half-hour. Sykes stood in the air-conditioned comfort of the front office and watched the police crawl in and around his motel like a battalion of army ants. Eventually one of the homicide detectives came in to question him and Juanita.

  “Did this guy you saw with the woman register for the room?”

  Sykes nodded and handed the detective the card. “Yeah, not that it’ll do you any good. I didn’t really look at the signature last night. It was late—besides, he paid cash, and cash customers around here usually don’t use their real names. For what it’s worth, he didn’t check out, of course, so I get to keep the deposit on the key.”

  The detective scanned the registration card and barked a humorless laugh. “‘Roman Polanski’, huh? Cute.”

  “Have you found her yet?” Sykes asked nervously.

  “Not exactly. But the forensics team found something behind the TV set. We’re not sure how it got there—not that it matters, come to think of it. It’s a human eye.”

  A week later Sykes sold the Bide-A-Wee to a Pakistani family and moved the hell to Idaho.

  Chapter Seven

  Skinner was numb throughout his bench hearing. While he was aware that he was before the judge on drunk and disorderly with vagrancy thrown in for good measure, since whoever it was who had kicked the shit out of him also lifted his wallet along with what little money he had left, and all his I.D. as well, he couldn’t bring himself to respond to the charges.

  Although he was thousands of miles away when it happened, Skinner felt responsible for his stepfather’s suicide. Instead of helping Luke through the grieving process, he’d run off on a half-baked search for his natural parents the moment they threw the last shovel of dirt on his adopted mother’s grave. He hadn’t been there when the old farmer had needed him most. He’d thought only of himself—of the promise held at the core of this most personal of mysteries. He hadn’t given his stepfather a single thought until he landed in trouble. But, as it turned out, good old big-hearted Luke couldn’t stand being by himself in that empty house, widowed and lonelier than he’d ever been before.

  Skinner barely registered the bang of the gavel and the judge’s verdict of ninety days. While he was innocent of the charges leveled against him, he deserved to be punished.

  However, after he was returned to the holding tank, he learned some disturbing news from his cellmate, who had finally sobered up enough to talk, that dispelled his self-pitying masochism. As it turned out, although Los Lobos County was so tiny its native population didn’t generate that much in the way of trouble, it had a prison ten times the size it needed because they handled the overflow from nearby—and far more affluent—Pima County, which was fond of sending them their more troublesome inmates. And since Butter Junction didn’t have a proper city jail, it automatically shunted any prisoner with more than thirty days on his ticket to Los Lobos Correctional.

  Two hours later, Skinner was manacled hand and foot and driven in a van to what would be his home for the next three months. Upon arrival he was unloaded just inside the gate of the Los Lobos Correctional Facility, stuck out in the middle of serious nowhere, surrounded by fifteen-foot-high chain-link fences topped with spools of razor wire and with guard towers pinning down the corners. It was hardly the Big House, but then, Skinner had never been locked up before. It was designed to house three hundred prisoners in three double-tiered cellblock wings that jutted from the central hub that housed the mess hall, sickbay, and administrative offices.

  There were men in the yard dressed in identical orange jumpsuits. Some were running laps on the track; others were pumping iron with a set of free weights. Most of them, however, simply ambled about in clumps of two or three, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and talking among themselves.

  “C’mon! You’ll have plenty of time to hang in the yard once you’re processed!” the deputy snapped, prodding Skinner with his baton as if he was recalcitrant livestock.

  They entered the central administration block and were routed through Receiving & Release by two men with the word “trustee” stenciled across the backs of their jumpsuits. Upon arriving he was brought before an inmate seated at a desktop computer who dutifully recorded his name, Social Security number, physical description, next of kin and medical history. Once that was done, he was once more fingerprinted and photographed. Upon being hustled past the Quartermaster’s desk he was issued an orange jumpsuit, a pair of work boots, two pair of wool socks, two pair of underwear, a comb and a toothbrush, all courtesy of the taxpayers.

  The deputy reappeared armed with a clipboard, and reconnected Skinner’s leg chains. He then checked the cell-assignment sheet and escorted him to Cell Block A.

  “Got you a new fish, Stanton,” the deputy yawned as he handed over the cell-assignment sheet.

 
The corrections officer grunted and scribbled his initials on the form. “Tate, get the prisoner situated.”

  The younger guard stepped forward, fixing Skinner with a cold glare designed to make his guts knot. It succeeded.

  Cradling what few possessions he had against his chest, Skinner stepped through the sally port that lead to the interior of the cell block, C.O. Tate literally breathing down his neck. The block was double-tiered with twenty-five units per level, each cell designed to hold two prisoners, with metal catwalks and stairs on each side. Since it was daytime, the doors were open and most of the cells empty, as the inmates were either at work or walking the yard. Those that were still in their cells barely looked up from their reading or letters home to note the new fish’s arrival.

  “Here you go, Cade. You get to bunk with Creighton! Lucky you!”

  Before Skinner had a chance to figure out whether the C.O. was being sarcastic or not, he found himself standing in one of the cramped cells, staring at a man old enough to be his father squatting on a stainless-steel institutional toilet. The older man lowered his less-than-current National Enquirer to fix Skinner with a curious stare.

  “Afternoon,” the inmate said flatly.

  “Uh, I’m sorry—” Skinner looked at his boots, the ceiling and the wall in rapid succession. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “If you ain’t never seen someone take a crap before,” the older man said with a weary laugh, “you better get used to it, kid.” He folded his newspaper and stood up to wipe.

  He was big—well over six feet—and his graying hair held in place with by a tube of Brylcreem. His face was heavily seamed about the eyes and the corners of his mouth, and his left eyelid drooped, but he otherwise seemed to be healthy. “The name’s Creighton. What’s your handle, kid?”

  “Skinner Cade.”

  He grunted again and lipped a cigarette. “What you in for, kid?”

  Skinner tried to make his voice sound as tough and worldly as possible. “Drunk and disorderly.”