The Big Dark Sky (66)
Joanna didn’t know what to say or do. She felt as though she stood on a narrow ledge, above a bottomless void, that the wrong word or a harmless gesture might trigger him, resulting in violence.
At last she risked three words. “Let me help.”
For the moment without malice, but in seeming sorrow, he said, “You can’t help. You drowned sweet Jojo just as your father drowned your mother. You’re not an answer to my despair, only another cause for it. I’ll never read you again, or any of your kind, except for Asher Optime. He’s shown me the true way. The rest of you are mere pestilence. After all these lonely years, I know what I must do. Now I gather myself to do it.” His sorrow became icy malice. “Starting with you, Miss Chase, for becoming corrupt, for murdering my Jojo.”
52
Two rounds from the .45, fired into the air, did not spook any of the four deer.
The buck stopped pawing the pavement with one hoof and raised his magnificent head, though not with alarm. He stared hard at Wyatt and snorted loudly, issuing a challenge that seemed too aggressive for a species designed to run fast rather than fight. He lowered his head and regarded the two men from under his brow, brandishing his rack of antlers as if it were a sword of many points. In mating season, contesting for a female, two males like this might fight for as long as two hours, until one gave up and ran off. Although their antlers would clash fiercely during the battle, neither would be seriously injured, most likely wouldn’t be cut at all. Wyatt sensed that in this case, the buck would gore him if it must and perhaps even crash into the Studebaker pickup with suicidal force if he and Hector tried to drive through the blockade.
The doe remained placid when he fired the pistol, relying on the buck, and the two youngsters actually came forward another few steps, bold as ordinary fawns would never be.
Hector said, “I haven’t seen anything like this little family here. Sometimes a brown bear will approach a vehicle, thinking maybe there’s food in it. But deer don’t scavenge like that. And I never did see deer that wouldn’t scoot when there was gunfire.”
Wyatt figured these animals were in thrall to Jimmy Alvarez, which could mean only one thing and maybe nothing good. Joanna’s secret friend didn’t want them to return yet, wanted her to himself for a while longer.
On this straightaway, the road was about two feet higher than the grassland to the right. A bank rose to the left, above which the forest loomed. The Studebaker wasn’t an all-wheel-drive vehicle capable of traveling overland.
“Might as well wait them out,” said Hector. “Won’t take long. Deer forage most of the day, and there’s nothing on this highway to feed a hungry belly.”
Hector climbed into the driver’s seat, Wyatt settled into the passenger seat, and they closed their doors. The deer didn’t move.
In spite of the wedge of storm clouds that pried into the day from the northwest, the declining sun still commanded the landscape, painting the afternoon with gold. The deer seemed to glow in that severely angled light. The county highway remained empty of traffic, as if Wyatt and Hector were the only survivors of Armageddon. The scene was as eerie as any encounter in a dream.
Hector sat in silence for a minute or two, his hands ready on the steering wheel, before he said, “Do all private detectives carry big guns?”
“No, sir. Most don’t carry guns. Neither do I, a lot of the time. But my client in this case . . . Well, there’s a sad abundance of people who hate him because of his money or for no reason.”
“Does this situation here”—Hector gestured at the deer—“does it worry you some?”
“Should it?”
“You haven’t put your gun away.”
The Heckler & Koch was in Wyatt’s right hand, with the muzzle directed toward the floorboard between his feet. He didn’t think he needed the weapon right now, but he wondered if he would be glad to have it ready when they returned to the Alvarez house. Joanna had said that Jimmy was harmless, an angel, but maybe the only angels that looked like him were those who had been cast into the Pit and transformed there.
He couldn’t share that ungenerous thought with Jimmy’s father, so he said, “It’s just that the threat against my client is serious, so anything unusual gets my hackles up.”
“Has Joanna somehow been threatened, too?”
“No, no. It’s just . . .” A satisfactory lie occurred to him. “She knows the history of the house. We thought she might be of help. And once she was here, she wanted to see you and Jimmy. You understand, I’m not at liberty to discuss my client’s affairs or what the threat is.”
“Wouldn’t want you to. My own problems are enough for me.”
As one, the four deer raised their heads high, and their ears twitched. They bolted off the roadway, into the grassland.
53
In his left hand, Asher Optime holds the 12-gauge shotgun once belonging to Dr. Steven Fielding, muzzle pointed at the sky. With his right hand, he takes a selfie with the small digital camera that he uses to document his journey for posterity. He is standing beside the sign that bears the faded word ZIPPORAH, at the entrance to the abandoned town.
The late-afternoon light is dramatic, and Asher is singularly photogenic; therefore, this should be an excellent addition to the photographic record that will be attached to his world-changing manifesto. He might never have undertaken this epic task if he had not been exceptionally good-looking. People are so shallow that they throw themselves fully into a great cause only if the leader is an imposing, romantic figure. Led by a man of ordinary appearance, this crusade would surely fail; but he has the face, the eyes, the hair, the stature, the animal grace of one who is destined to succeed.