Blackbird (36 page)

But I saw him twice more. The first encounter came when he was in court to challenge the legality of his capture. I was there to testify at an appeals hearing in an old case and ran into him in the hallway outside the courtroom. Despite his lawyer’s efforts to steer him away from me we came face to face for a couple of seconds, long enough for him to sneer contemptuously at me, and for me to develop an unaccountable but absolute certainty about something.

I tracked Rick Hart down in the third-floor men’s restroom. I said, ‘Zip and listen, Rick – Hazen killed Joy Dawn Therone. Don’t ask me how I know. I know. All you’ve got to do is prove it.’

The investigation that followed uncovered enough evidence for an indictment, leading to, among other things, a desperate battle by Hazen’s lawyers to keep him from having to provide DNA samples in the Therone case. They lost.

The second meeting came when I made the trip to Tri-State to visit him in his cell on the fourth floor, where I found him pale and unshaven but still defiant.

‘I suppose you think you pulled one off, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘You tell me.’

He watched me for a few seconds, breathing hard. ‘What did you come here for?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘To get a good look at you, now that I know who you really are. Maybe to hear what somebody like you says when he’s busted once and for all. Or maybe just to look you in the eye and tell you what you already know – you’re through with little girls. The DNA’s going to be the end of you.’

‘What makes you so sure I’ll get the needle?’

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘But there’s always hope.’

‘Funny talk, considering the source,’ Hazen said, trying for a cynical smile. ‘You always said you were against the death penalty.’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘On the other hand, sometimes a man’s got to show a little flexibility.’

‘You know, I’ve always hated jocks like you, Bonham – grabbing all the girls and headlines. God’s gift to the fucking world.’ He slammed his fist down on his thigh. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

‘Nobody, really,’ I said. ‘But just the same, I’ll be there with the Therones when the techs stick you. Look for me. I’ll be the guy in Joy Dawn’s chair.’

FORTY-EIGHT

Dusty, looking as fit as he was when I was in high school, had been waiting for us at the front gate of the Flying S on the day the story ended – by becoming another story – leaning back against the grille of his old tan Dodge four-by-four in the thin wintering sunlight with a steaming mug of coffee in his only hand, legs crossed at the ankles. In his blue flannel shirt, faded jeans, boots and weather-beaten black Resistol he looked completely at home on the range, the perfect image of what he was – a horseman in his element. At his side Knuckleball, the yellow Lab, pink tongue hanging out, watched with him as the caravan gradually slowed and turned off the highway.

Tyres crunching in the gravel, the vehicles rolled one by one through the wrought-iron arch and drew even with him: two sheriff’s department cruisers full of deputies, the coroner’s Blazer,
Buford
with me at the wheel and LA and Zito on the seat beside me, a couple of official county pickups, one a four-wheel drive pulling the backhoe on a double-axle flatbed trailer. When we’d all eased to a stop Dusty spoke briefly to the drivers of the two cruisers, then, with Knuckleball at his heel, walked along the line of vehicles,
nodding and trading a few words with the occupants as Knuckleball gave three polite wags of his tail at each stop. After concluding his inspection of the trailer, Dusty walked back to my window.

‘Hi again, Dusty,’ said LA.

‘Hi, girl.’ Now Knuckleball’s tail waved continuously as he grinned from ear to ear.

Dusty said, ‘You holding up okay, son?’

‘Yeah, I guess so, thanks,’ I said. ‘Dusty, this is Floyd Zito, an old sidekick. Zito, Dusty Rhodes.’

Zito reached his one hand across to shake, and Dusty eyed his empty right sleeve, set his coffee on
Buford
’s roof and took Zito’s hand. ‘You and me together might make a piano player, Floyd.’

‘Yeah, if you can tell me what the hell all those little black and white keys are for,’ said Zito.

Dusty smiled. He said, ‘Bis, I told those boys in the cruisers they’ll need to leave their vehicles at the house. Guess I’ll let ’em ride in the back of my truck, the ones I can’t get in the cab.’ He nodded at the backhoe. ‘Dry as it’s been, we might get that rig across the creek. Can’t make it, I’ll come back for a tractor.’

Rachel met us on the drive behind the house. ‘I guess I wish you luck,’ she said, hugging me hard.

Overhead, barn swallows looped and dived in the clear air.

As we bumped along behind the trailer, over trails I had for most of my life associated with hooves, not wheels, LA tuned the radio at low volume to an oldies station out of Texarkana, a long-ago ballad about seeing a sunrise in a lover’s eyes.

I said nothing, gazing blindly off into distances I’d once thought were beautiful.

LA said, ‘When did you know Johnny’s gun wasn’t loaded?’

I hadn’t expected the question, though I probably should have. I wasn’t sure of the answer. I hoped it was after I fired the first round.

‘Not soon enough to let him live,’ I said.

‘It was the way he wanted it, Biscuit. Once he knew it was over. It was you he chose.’

I looked at her, not speaking, the sour sickness of that moment churning in me like hot slag.

‘He thought he owed you that,’ she said.

I still didn’t answer. I turned off the radio.

Finally I said, ‘It didn’t buy him anything.’

‘He wouldn’t have wanted it to.’

Forty minutes later we stood watching the men offload the backhoe beside the pond.

‘Can he dig careful enough with that thing?’ asked Zito.

‘He’s done it before,’ said one of the deputies.

LA glanced at him.

‘Dug up bones, I mean.’

The operator, a freckled old farmboy with calloused hands the size of catcher’s mitts, extended the hydraulic arm over the site I had marked out for him and brought it slowly back, a uniform three-inch layer of soil and bracken curling gracefully into the bucket.

‘Hey,’ said Zito. ‘Guy knows what he’s doing.’

Another careful pass, then another, all of us watching like student surgeons as the earth slowly gave up its truth.

‘Did he say anything about how deep?’ asked LA.

I shook my head, saying, ‘I don’t even know if he was telling the truth about her being out here.’

‘Might ask the bastard again, if we knew the area code for hell,’ said Zito.

I looked down at my shoes.

‘Sorry, bud,’ he said. ‘I just meant why would he lie, right there on the verge of dying and all?’

LA, losing interest in the conversation, wandered in closer to the point of excavation and stood where she could see the new earth as the bucket uncovered it. The lulling regularity of the machine’s movement, the perfect sameness of the cutting strokes and the cough and roar of the diesel seemed to enclose us in a kind of bubble of isolation, a dimension where the meaning of ordinary time slipped away.

Suddenly LA signalled the backhoe operator, and we all moved forward. No one spoke as we stood looking down at the ivory curve of bone exposed by the last pass of the bucket – the visible edge of a long-gone world and a story that was finally ready to end.

When the almost-weightless body bag had been loaded into the coroner’s wagon, we still stood in silence, because there was nothing to be said. LA stood apart from the rest of us and watched in silence, her eyes brimming, haunted by her own sorrows, old and new.

Finally, she came over and hugged me. ‘Now, Biscuit,’ she said softly. ‘Now you can come home.’

Acknowledgements

Some of my early sources of inspiration were benign, real credits to the universe, while others, including many of the more valuable ones, were wildly dysfunctional, irredeemably mean or just flat out crazy. I’d like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for all of them – the innumerable friends, enemies, acquaintances, accomplices, soul-takers, teachers, abusers, miscellaneous kin and others who by walking with, or near, me through significant stretches of our lives filled my head with a wonderland of stories.

And as for the here and now: along with the many others who richly deserve acknowledgment for their kind patience and direct or indirect support, proofing with the vision of eagles, feedback and general cheerleading in getting
Blackbird
aloft – like my great friends in Portugal as well as those across the rest of Europe, Australia and North America, not to mention my long-suffering family, office staff, daily associates and patients – I’d especially like to thank my editor at Canongate, Francis Bickmore; my agent, Victoria Hobbs of A.M. Heath in London; my manager and good friend, Dr. Marshall Thomas of 7Arts Foundation and Colossal Concepts Management, a polymath who never calls
himself that but occasionally bestows the title upon those who have won his invaluable regard, and who keeps a garden in which he attempts to grow others of his kind; and the Honourable James Edmund Byng, Force of Nature.

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