Crystal Meth Cowboys (24 page)

Only Cosmo the barkeep kept his distance at the wake, eyeing Wes obliquely, his magnified eyeballs saying he suspected, he
knew
Wes Lyedecker's good intentions were responsible for the demise of his best customer.

Wes put his finger through the trigger guard. Too easy. Three quick movements. Lift, point, squeeze.

Not so. To do it right he should walk out on the salt flats for a few hundred yards where he wouldn't wake anyone and his blood would drain into the soft silt and the buzzards would pick him clean. That would be the honorable way.

Florence Jillison had done as she was told. But by the time she convinced the Chief to convince the Sheriff to
stake out the airports, John Aubuchon was miles above the Pacific in his twin-engine Gruman.

Florence didn't attend the funeral. She missed the parade of squad cars – Wislow PD units, CHP, Air Base MP's, sheriff's deputies, corrections officers - that followed the hearse westbound on Playa Road, headlights wig-wagging, light bars blazing. They were backed up all the way through town. Motor officers who were sealing off intersections turned and saluted as the hearse rolled by. Wes followed in the LTD Crown Victoria, waxed and buffed to a gleaming shine.

Chief Sunomoka delivered the eulogy at graveside, saying whatever you could say about Bell you couldn't say he wasn't
alive
, which seemed to Wes a weird thing to say about a waxen corpse. Wes tendered his resignation after the burial and gave the Chief of Police an envelope containing the mini-cassette. He didn't bother with explanations. The Chief could do with it as he pleased.

Too easy. Wes tucked the .45 into the front of his trousers and jacked open the car door. He extricated himself from the low slung seat in stages. He braced for a blast of cold air but the desert night was calm. Truck tires sang down the interstate. No one stirred. The rest area was at rest.

He should have known. He should have stayed at Bell's side and comforted Sherri. He had recognized Bell's startled, far off look, had seen it on the faces of the terminal patients being wheeled up and down the halls of the hospital where his mother worked. Wes Lyedecker's two machine pistol rounds caused heart palpitations that burst a blood vessel in Bell's brain that led to a series of small strokes that produced a heart seizure that caused Bell's death on the operating table. Lt. Coroner Bernard Fischer performed the autopsy. He discovered that Bell suffered from cardiac arrythmia and cited that as the central culprit in his expiration. A Shooting Review Board
composed of Chief Sunomoka, Sgt. Harrick and Little Jim ruled that Lyedecker's shoot was justified.

Wes closed the car door and buttoned his suit coat over the gun. He knew better of course. If a certain rookie cop hadn't contacted a certain Mayor-elect with certain information he was expressly warned not to share, Officer Thomas J. Bell would still be alive.

The 'J' stood for Jeremiah. It was on the death certificate. He would have loved to give Bell shit about that name. That was the worst part of death for the living, thought Wes. All the leftover scenes you looked forward to - his sheepish entrance into the recovery room, Bell saying, 'You know, Braintree, when I said "Shoot the motherfuckers" I wasn't referring to myself,' Wes saying, '
Now
you tell me' or, better yet, just a dumbass 'Ohhhhh'.

Having saved his partner's life Wes would have felt entitled to ask Bell the one question that had really been bugging him. What was the deal with that stupid joke? The one about the talking hat box. All it could say was 'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.' What was so godamned funny about that?!

Wes trod the sidewalk toward the brown pod that housed the restrooms and the road map mounted in a glass case. It had an old-fashioned phone booth, with a door that opened and closed. He studied it. He looked out across the grass to the lunar dark of the salt flats. He walked over to the phone booth and pulled the cantilevered glass door shut. A light came on. He pushed 'O' and placed a credit card call. His mother answered on the second ring.

"Wesley?"

"Hi Mom."

"I knew it was you. What's wrong?"

The phone booth smelled of cigarette smoke. Wes opened the door, dousing the overhead light. "Nothing much. Just thought I'd call you up in the middle of the night and say hi."

The connection had a split second delay. He heard his last word echo-echo down the line.

"All right," said his mother gamely. "Hi. How goes it out there…ere…ere?"

Wes smiled. He shifted the .45 from between his legs to across his thigh. He took his time. "Not so hot actually. My partner, Officer Bell, was shot and killed."

"Oh my dear God," said his mother. "Wes, that's terrible…ible…ible."

"Yes," said Wes. "It is that."

"But what…I mean, how did…" Her words were swallowed up.

“How did it happen?” said Wes.

“Yes,” said his mother.

“You want to know who killed him?”

“Yes, of course.”

Wes looked out and up, at the cut glass brilliance of the desert sky. "Well," he said, "As it turns out, I did."

Wes listened to his words repeat themselves down two thousand miles of underground cable and disappear into the silence at the other end. He pressed his forehead to the smoky glass.