“For a man who’s been here all of five days, you sure have caused some trouble, ain’t ya?”
The expression on Alvin Lang’s face was of a man assaulted by a malodorous scent. Something rank had invaded his nostrils, and the sense of displeasure it gave him was writ large on his features.
Henry and Evie had driven over to his place. It was early, a little before eight on Tuesday morning, and in the light of day, it seemed that this was akin to sharpening a stick with which to wake a slumbering wolf.
“I didn’t plan to cause any trouble, Deputy Sheriff Lang,” Henry said.
“Oh hell, you just go on and call me Alvin,” Lang said. “I ain’t even had time to get my uniform on.”
“You gonna ask us up for coffee?” Evie said.
Lang smiled. Many was the time he’d thought about what he would do with Evie Chandler. After all, he wasn’t so many years older than her. He was single, had a couple of little intrigues going on here and about, but nothing serious.
“Sure, Evie,” Lang said. “You can come on up for coffee, but I gotta be away in a while. Got work to do, places to go, people to see.”
Lang led the way, Evie and Henry following on after. Once in the kitchen, Lang busied himself setting out cups and cream and sugar.
“So you got Sheriff Riggs madder ’an a shithouse rat,” Lang said. “He sure as hell don’t appreciate you snoopin’ around in his family business, my friend.” The communication was directed at Henry Quinn, and Lang made a point of making
my friend
sound like a couched threat.
“Just wanted to deliver a letter,” Henry said.
“Sure you did,” Lang replied. “Just like you wanted to play dumbass with a pistol back in San Angelo, and look where the hell that got you.”
“Don’t need to be reminded about that,” Henry said.
“Well, maybe you do, Henry,” Lang said, “because you sure as hell don’t seem to have learned your lesson.”
“I think this is a little different,” Evie said.
Lang poured coffee for all three of them, passed around the cups and sat down. “Circumstances are different, sure, but that don’t mean that whatever Henry Quinn is doin’ is any less foolhardy.”
“What you did was wrong, Alvin Lang,” Evie said. “That stunt with the package. That was a setup, and it was plain wrong. Searchin’ my pa’s house, Henry’s car an’ all. You don’t think you’re gonna get away with something like that, do you?”
Henry reached out and touched Evie’s arm. “Hey,” he said. “Let’s not get into a fistfight here.”
It seemed that Henry’s physical gesture, perhaps the fact that he was familiar enough with Evie to tell her to back down, irritated Alvin Lang. Perhaps he felt challenged by Henry. This was his territory, and he had known Evie Chandler a great deal longer than Henry, after all. Regardless, this ex-con troublemaker had somehow secured her attention and affection.
Evie—being Evie—acted as if Henry hadn’t even spoken.
“People screw up, Alvin. Everyone fucks up one time or another, and you got no right to—”
“Well, you can stop right there, Evie Chandler,” Lang said. “You are in no position to be telling me about what I do and do not have a right to do.”
“Alvin, you know what I mean—” she started.
“Evie, seriously—” Henry interjected, but Lang raised his hand and silenced him.
“Let her talk, boy,” Lang said.
Henry felt tense, as if waiting for news that could only be worse than expected.
“You set him up, Alvin, you and Carson. You got Henry all wound up in a knot with another year in Reeves hangin’ over his head. What for? Because he wants to get a message to Evan’s daughter. Seems to me that this is a very strange response to a very simple situation.”
Lang shrugged. “Carson says he don’t want to help out his brother. Isn’t that enough for you to leave well enough alone? Evidently not. You wanna keep stickin’ your fingers in the socket to see if the shock feels the same. Sometime soon you’re gonna get burned real bad.”
“Are you threatening us, Alvin?” Evie asked.
Henry leaned forward. “Evie, enough.” His tone was firm and certain.
“You her keeper all of a sudden?” Lang asked. He looked at Evie. “He responsible for everything that comes out of your mouth now, girl?”
“Like I said, I didn’t come here for a fistfight, Alvin,” Henry said. “I never intended to upset anyone.”
“Well, you walked into it blind, didn’t you?” Lang said. “Or you done got yourself set up by Evan Riggs. Seems to me he’s the cause of what’s happening here, eh? The real problem here is between them brothers.”
“So what is the problem between them?” Evie asked. “You must know.”
“What I know and what I discuss with you are two very different things.”
“Never known so many people with so many secrets,” Evie replied.
Lang sighed. “Hell, you’re beginning to irritate my nerves, little lady.” He looked at Henry. “Maybe you
should
take charge of what comes out of her mouth, because it sure as hell is gratin’ on me right now.”
“I am perfectly capable of takin’ responsibility for what comes out of my mouth, Alvin Lang,” Evie snapped.
Lang sneered, looked sideways at Henry as if conspiratorially masculine. “I don’t know that any woman can say that with a clear heart,” he said.
“Christ Almighty, you really are as much of an asshole as I thought,” Evie said.
Lang laughed sincerely, heartily. He believed her antagonism a source of real humor.
Looking at Henry, Lang said, “Tell her to shut her chatter, boy, or I’ll quiet her down some myself.”
“Fuck you, Alvin Lang,” Evie said.
“This is bullshit,” Henry said. “You’re as bad as each other. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but we were supposed to be having a perfectly civil conversation about this situation. This is fucked-up, and I am really getting to the point where I don’t want anything more to do with it.”
“You should listen to your man here,” Lang said to Evie. “Walk away. That’s what we’ve been telling you, and that’s what we’re gonna keep on tellin’ you.”
For a few moments there was an awkward silence in the small kitchen.
“Why you so scared, Alvin?” Henry asked.
Lang turned slowly and looked at him unerringly. “Who said I was scared?”
“Writ all over you,” Henry said. “Secrets. That’s what we’ve got here. Evie is right. Never been anyplace where there’s so many people who are afraid to open their mouths.”
Lang laughed dryly. “What the fuck is this—some kind of bullshit backwoods psychology? Oh sure, I’m afraid to open my mouth.” He shook his head. “Like hell I am. Go fuck yourselves, the pair of you.”
Neither Evie nor Henry responded.
“Maybe it’s time to leave,” Lang said, and leaned forward as if to rise from his chair.
“What happened to you?” Henry said.
Lang looked at him askance, his expression one of immediate suspicion.
“Heard word you used to be a straight shooter, Alvin. Heard word you were on the up-and-up. Knew where the lines were, knew when you were over them. What the hell happened to you?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Henry shook his head. “Was it the thing with the woman?”
Lang bluffed it, but the color draining from his face was something that would have been visible from the end of the street. “Wh-what are you talking about, boy?” he said, doing all he could to sound as controlled and direct as possible.
“You know, Alvin … all that trouble that went down a few years ago. Is that what Sheriff Riggs has over you?”
Alvin Lang was white, not only with shock but with anger. “You haven’t got the faintest fucking clue what you are talking about,” he said. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. This has nothing to do with Sheriff Riggs—”
“What doesn’t, Alvin?” Evie asked. “Are we talking about what happened in May of sixty-six, or are we talking about something else?”
Lang said nothing for a good ten seconds. Those seconds stretched and distorted as he looked at Evie, then to Henry, and back to Evie again.
From Henry’s viewpoint, Evie’s expression was implacable, yet he knew a deep and profound panic simmered beneath the surface. She was terrified. He could feel it there in the room, something almost tangible.
“You just crossed the line,” Lang said, and his voice was gentle, almost sympathetic, and—as a result—altogether disturbing. “You open your mouth about whatever you have heard one more time, and—”
“And what, Alvin?” Henry said, feeling now that it had gone far beyond any point of retraction. The wound was opened, it was bleeding, and nothing would cauterize it. “Your daddy works up in the Department of Corrections, I hear, and your granddaddy is the lieutenant governor of Texas. You got stuff buried here that’s gonna upset them real good, I guess …”
Lang seemed to slip into some sort of slow-motion reality, a reality unrelated to that within which Henry and Evie existed.
Evie looked at Henry. Henry shook his head. He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t understand what they had done here, and he had no inkling of the consequences.
“You people are as good as dead,” Lang said, and even as the words left his lips, he rose from the table, pushed the chair back, and walked to the kitchen counter. From a drawer beside the stove, he produced a .38 revolver.
“Jesus, Alvin, what the fuck are you doing?”
“I d-did what Evan should ha-have done,” Lang said, his voice kind of slurring, as if he were drunk, losing control of his faculties. “Oh, fuck,” he said. “He told you, didn’t he? He’s gonna tell everyone. I knew it. I knew it would come to this. Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty …”
“Alvin, seriously, put the fucking gun down,” Evie said. She looked utterly aghast, didn’t know whether to stay seated or get to her feet, then decided on the latter but rose slowly, her arms out toward Lang as if entreating him to set the .38 aside and not do whatever the hell he was thinking of doing.
Lang pointed the gun at Henry. Even as the barrel was aimed unerringly at Henry’s heart, Henry could see Lang’s hand shaking. Lang wasn’t even looking directly at Henry, his gaze flitting back and forth between Henry, Evie, and some vague middle ground that may very well have been nothing but a thought.
Lang smiled then, and the expression was unsettling.
“All comes back, doesn’t it?” he said. “Past is the landscape that follows you no matter where you go.”
“Alvin,” Evie pleased, her voice edged with real panic and distress. “For God’s sake, nothing is worth this. Please … please don’t shoot him …”
Lang just looked back at her and smiled. The smile was almost peaceful. “All of this because of shame,” he said.
“But it doesn’t have to be this way,” Evie said, her tone was pleading, desperate.
Henry couldn’t move, his gaze fixed dead ahead, watching Lang’s ever-shifting expression as he wrestled with the reality and possible consequences of what was happening. If he shot Henry, he would have to shoot Evie. If he was to commit murder, then there could be no eyewitness.
Alvin seemed to look right through Evie, and then he turned back to Henry. He held Henry’s gaze for a good fifteen seconds, then looked down at the gun as if it were being held there by some force he could not control. He sighed audibly, the sound like something deep inside him as it collapsed in slow motion.
“Only shame for me is that I won’t see Carson’s face when it all falls apart,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
The hand tightened on the gun.
“Fuck it,” Alvin said.
“Alvin, no …” Evie gasped.
Alvin gave one last vacant smile, turned the gun around, aimed it at his own heart, and pulled the trigger with his thumb.
The sound wasn’t anywhere near as loud as Henry Quinn had expected it to be. Compared to the sound of the gun with which he’d wounded Sally O’Brien, it was nothing at all. A firecracker, a punctured tire, a hand clap.
There was no drama, no blood, no agonizing death throes. Alvin Lang just slid to the floor, his hand releasing the pistol as he hit the floor. It skidded across the linoleum and stopped against the baseboard.
The only sound, in fact, was Evie’s screaming, and to Henry it seemed the most deafening thing in the world.
Morning of Monday, August eighth, Ralph Wyatt rose early. Seemed the hours he slept and the hours he lay awake restless and agitated could no longer be separated. For the previous weeks since Rebecca had been up at Ector County Hospital, his daily visits had become ever more difficult and exhausting. It was like watching his wife die for a second time. He was losing his mind, and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. Physical and mental exhaustion assaulted every sense. He found himself mumbling and then turning suddenly to hurl expletives at someone existing only in his mind. The law was down on him, medical opinion, too, and now the psychiatrists at Ector had their claws into his daughter, and it seemed that she would never come home. And if she did, well, he didn’t believe that she would really be his daughter anymore. Already she was vacillating between periods of intense introversion and wild excitement. They had given her medication. He didn’t even know what it was. He worried not only for her but for the child inside her; any kind of medication surely couldn’t be right for an unborn baby.
Ralph had started drinking. He had drunk as his wife died, seeming to find some brief solace in the oblivion that liquor gave, and after her death had sworn off the stuff for life. That oath had now been broken, and broken far too easily. There was a thirst inside him that could not be quenched, an emptiness that could not be filled, and it was all because of Carson Riggs.
Work on the farm had gone undone. He had thought to call Gabe, but had decided against it. He was not of a mind to supervise anyone. He was not of a mind to engage in anything but the rescue of his daughter from the clutches of Ector County Hospital, and after that the clutches of Carson Riggs and his scheming family. William and Grace Riggs must have known what Carson was going to do. By doing nothing, they had in fact colluded, wittingly or unwittingly, and now, even now—Ralph Wyatt watching his daughter fade before his eyes—they could have stepped in, could have insisted that their son relinquish whatever obsession he felt to punish her so severely. Rebecca was their daughter-in-law, after all. They were duty-bound to help, if not from any sense of loyalty they might feel toward Rebecca, then because their younger son had been the one to create this situation in the first place.
Ralph Wyatt was not so narrow as to consider that Rebecca bore no responsibility for what had happened. The girl was a wild one—always had been, always would be. Took after her mother in that respect. Both she and Evan were as moths to flames. Ralph saw that, had been aware of it since they first met as children. They had grown up together, both Riggs boys and his daughter. He’d known that there would be a problem at some stage, that one of them would lose out, but if he’d been told that this would be the outcome, he would never have believed it.
On a couple of occasions Ralph Wyatt had considered marching over to the Riggs place and confronting Carson, William, Grace. He had practiced his speech, the vehemence pouring out of him as he paced the kitchen, in his mind’s eye the Riggs family standing in front of him, all of them stunned into shamed silence as he told them exactly what he thought of them, as he demanded they do whatever was necessary to see his daughter out of that terrible place. But the words had stayed in his kitchen, and they had echoed back at him and lodged in his mind until they became bitter and twisted. He was aggrieved, distraught, wound tighter than a watch spring, and the thought to go on over there and vent his anger, to demand immediate action, just grew ever stronger. His daughter had to be out of that place, and if neither her husband nor the father of her child wanted her, then so be it. She would stay with her father, and as soon as was feasible, they would move away from this godforsaken place and disappear forever. He could help her raise the child. He would be the best grandfather a child could ever wish for.
The thought to kill Carson Riggs came like a bolt out of nowhere. It came with the force of a truck, and yet it arrived silently, almost gracefully, and it sat in and amongst Ralph Wyatt’s dark and twisted thoughts as if it had been there all along.
It hung there like a second shadow. Take a thirty-aught-six over there and kill the son of a bitch. So he was sheriff. What did that matter? If he was going to kill Carson Riggs, then Ralph himself would be done for anyway.
A little after eighty-thirty, Ralph Wyatt took a bottle of bourbon from the kitchen counter and poured a good slug. He drank it down. He went to the back of the house and fetched down a Springfield. Had it for years, kept it cleaned and oiled, rarely used it. He loaded the rifle, went out to the truck, and set off for the Riggs place.
As he drew close to the turnoff for the farm, he saw William Riggs heading off in the direction of Calvary. He guessed that he was en route to see Carson.
Ralph Wyatt floored the truck and overtook Riggs as the dirt track reached the highway. He came to a staggered halt, Riggs swerving off the track and slamming on the brakes before he hit a tree. The front passenger-side wheel wound up in a rut.
William Riggs got out, his blood up, and stood there for a moment as Ralph Wyatt got out of his truck.
He saw the rifle immediately.
“What the hell are you doing, Wyatt? You damned near drove me off the road into that there tree. Christ, man, what are you thinking?”
Ralph Wyatt looked like half the man Riggs knew. Hair all mussed, eyes wide, black beneath them as if he hadn’t slept for a week. He was unshaven, his clothes disheveled, and he carried a Springfield. He took a step toward Riggs, and Riggs recognized the lack of surefootedness that came with drink or physical exhaustion. The man appeared to be on the edge of collapse.
“Ralph,” Riggs said, almost as if Wyatt needed a reminder of his own name. “What’s the deal here, Ralph? What you doin’ with that gun?”
“Where’s your boy at, Riggs?” Wyatt said.
“Ralph, calm yourself. Christ, man. I don’t know what’s gotten into your head, but it can’t be right. You look like hell. Come on back to the farm with me. Let’s get you fixed up, get some clean clothes, get you some breakfast, some strong coffee, eh?”
Wyatt raised the gun. He held it at waist level, cradling it in his nervous hands. He caught flashes of bright light out of the corner of his eye.
“Now, look here, Ralph. This is just plumb crazy. You and I have things to talk about, sure … Maybe we got trouble, you know? We need to work this thing out. Carson done her wrong, man. I get that. But she done him wrong, too, and we gotta take responsibility for our kin and help them sort out their troubles.”
“Gon’ ask you one more time, Riggs,” Wyatt growled. The lights in his eyes were fiercer. He raised one hand as if to shield himself from a sun that wasn’t there. “Where’s your boy at?”
“You want Carson? You want to talk to Carson? Is that it?”
Wyatt sneered. “This here Springfield got everything in it I wanna say to Carson Riggs.”
Riggs backed up a step. There was a .45 in the glove box of his truck. He couldn’t even remember if it was loaded. It had been there forever. Longer than forever.
“Ralph … seriously, my friend—”
“Friend?” Wyatt laughed cruelly. “This from a man who sees his own daughter-in-law in that place? Don’t know what the hell Carson has going on with Roy Sperling and Warren Garfield, but they cooked up all manner of deceit and labeled her crazy. You coulda done something, Riggs. You coulda dealt with your boys, but you didn’t. Now I gotta take care of it, and it ain’t right. You call me a friend? We known each other all these years. Our kids done growed up side by side all these years, and this is what we got now, man. This is what we got and it needs to be dealt with …”
Riggs took another sideways step, but it was unsubtle and awkward.
“Back the hell away from there, Riggs!” Wyatt barked. “What you got in there? You got a pistol? You gon’ get a pistol outta there and shoot me? Is that what you’re plannin’ to do?”
“You got your rifle there, Ralph. You gotta rifle aimed right at my heart.”
“I ain’t gonna shoot you, Riggs. Christ, what kinda person you think I am?”
“I think you’ve lost your mind, Ralph. I think you done lost your mind some, and you need to come on back with me and get some rest and some food and whatever, and then we can sit down and talk this out.”
“Your boys is the ones you need to talk to, William. Both of them. They done a bad thing here, and it’s too late to fix it, isn’t it? She’s gonna have this baby, and neither one of them is gonna want it. But I want it, Riggs. I will take her away and look after her and the kid, and I hope to hell that kid don’t look like a Riggs, ’cause you people done me enough hurt to last a lifetime already.”
“I understand, Ralph … I understand how much you’re hurtin’ …”
“You don’t understand nothin’,” Wyatt said, “and after I’m done with them, your boys gonna understand nothin’, too.”
“Meanin’ what?”
“Meanin’ I’m gon’ find the pair of them and kill ’em stone-fucking dead.”
“Can’t let you do that, Ralph.”
“Can’t do squat to stop me, William.”
Riggs went for the gun. He believed he didn’t have a choice. He moved quickly, but Ralph Wyatt was just as quick, and even as William Riggs turned back out of the car and looked back at Ralph, that Springfield barrel was pointing right at his head.
The .45 was loaded, even chambered, and William Riggs acted out of nothing but instinctive response when he saw Ralph Wyatt’s finger tighten on the trigger of the Springfield.
Two gunshots went off as one.
Grace Riggs heard it. Wondered if that troublesome old truck was misfiring again.
Wyatt took a bullet in the throat, fell back into the ditch.
Riggs was jolted with the recoil of the pistol. He hadn’t fired it for a long time, and it sure had a kick. He saw Wyatt go down, knew there was every possibility the man was still alive, still clutching that Springfield, and he made a cautious approach.
He saw the soles of Wyatt’s boots. Those feet weren’t moving. Riggs’s heart was running like a train, adrenaline coursing through him, and he didn’t know whether to feel relief or terror or both. He was alive—that was the main thing—and he had acted in self-defense. There was no one who could question that, even taking into account the fact that his son was the sheriff.
It was as he looked down at Ralph Wyatt’s lifeless body that William Riggs felt something in his side. His arm felt weak, and for some reason the gun slipped involuntarily from his fingers. He looked down as a wave of nausea and light-headedness overtook him, and there was blood on his hands, his arm, blood down the front of his pants. He frowned. He had not touched Wyatt. Where had the blood come from?
Something kicked him in the right side, something hard and sharp, and it was only then that he understood that Ralph Wyatt’s bullet had found a mark.
A weight dropped on him, and he went to his knees.
With a sense of disorientation flooding through him, he pulled back his jacket, saw the red rosette of blood blooming out through his undergarment, his shirt, his vest, and he knew that there had to be some hole in him to be leaking that much.
William Riggs felt as if he’d been kicked in the back. He went forward onto his hands and knees, and an unearthly pain ripped through him. It was like being struck by lightning. Maybe things weren’t so good. Maybe he wasn’t going to walk away from this.
He could hear himself then. It was a terrible sound, the sound of a man running out of air awful fast. His only thought was to make it back to the house. He started moving, and with each staggered motion, the pain tore through him again. Blood on the leaves beneath his hands, blood in the dirt, his own blood, and every foot he made felt like a mile.
Stubbornness alone got him twenty yards. How long it took, no one would ever know. He fell facedown in the mud within sight of the house, but there was no one there to see him.
William Riggs spent his last seconds wondering why the Riggs family had been dealt such a losing hand.
It was Carson who arrived first at the scene, not because it had been reported, but because he was on his way back home to relay one last thought to his mother.
The message with which he’d driven over and the message he then delivered were not the same thing.
He came up on the house with blood on his shirt and blood on his hands and a look in his eyes like God had punished him good.