The Last Good Kiss (37 page)

and the boy lost their angry spirit, and their shoulders

sagged like empty sacks, but the girl stood defiant and

erect. She even managed to spit on the ground toward

me. I couldn't have spit if my life depended on it. I

lifted the unconscious girl and walked toward the cabin.

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"Where the hell did you come from?" I asked

Trahearne.

"I don't know," he said, "but wherever it was, it was

a hell of a walk." A grin brightened his tired face.

"Let's go in the house and sit down," I told

everybody as I carried the girl toward the doorway.

They all followed like ducks in a row.

"They came just at dusk," Selma said as she lifted

her hand to touch her swollen cheek, "came up the hill

with silenced revolvers and began shooting the dogs.

They shot the dogs and some of the animals and birds in

the cages, then they took Melinda away." She moved

her hand from her cheek, down to caress the forehead

of the girl sleeping in her lap. Her voice sounded so

distant and hollow that the interior of the cabin seemed

to darken as she spoke. "Benjamin tried to stop them

but they beat him senseless, then one of them hit me

when I tried to help him."

"I should've been here," the other girl said bitterly,

then banged the head of her ax against the floor.

"You'd have just been hurt too," Selma said quietly.

"I'm glad you were gone." Then she stared at me.

"Melinda kept screaming that she would go with them,

go with them gladly, but they kept laughing and kicking

poor Benjamin and shooting at the dogs."

"They shot the bulldog?" I asked, already knowing

the answer.

"Gut-shot him," the girl with the ax answered, "but

he and the three-legged bitch were still alive this

morning when I left the vet hospital down at CSU. "

"They're gonna be damned sorry for that," I said.

"What about kidnapping my wife, for god's sake,"

Trahearne said.

"That, too," I said. "For all of it." Then I straightened up. "How many of them were there?"

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"Four," Selma answered.

"Was one of them a big dude, a Mexican with a pug's

face?" I asked.

"They all seemed like giants," Selma said blankly,

"and they wore ski masks."

"You didn't call the sheriff, did you?" I asked.

"They said they would kill Melinda if we did," she

answered, "then come back and kill all of us. I believed

them, You should have seen them shooting the dogs,

the crows and hawks and the bobcat in their cages. I

believed them, so I didn't call the sheriff. " She raised

her hand to touch her face, palpating the bruise as if the

wound went deep within her. "What could we do?" she

pleaded. "What can we do?"

"I can damn sure do something," Trahearne threatened, lifting the shotgun as if it were a holy ikon, the rallying banner for his private jihad.

"Try to relax," I told him. He gave me a foul look,

then stood up and walked about the cabin, glaring

down his puffy nose at the sleeping ranks of cats. Then

I asked Selma, "Why did you jump me?"

"We thought you must have brought them," she said.

"Why?"

"You're the only one who knew who she was-where

she was," she answered. "Why did you come back?"

"She wanted to talk to me," I said, "to tell me what

to tell her . . . her natural mother."

"And what are you going to tell her?" Selma asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe I'll tell her that I

have climbed the mountain and seen the prophet, but

all I know is that I'm getting too old for this sort of

foolishness." I tried a wry grin, and it seemed perfectly

at home on my face.

"You're hurt too," Selma said with a brief smile. "I

suppose I did that."

"It's nothing," I scoffed like John Wayne.

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"Stacy," Selma said to the girl with the ax, "why

don't you see to Mr. Sughrue's wound." She leaned her

ax against the low couch where she sat, then walked

across the room with a sheepish grin. "Stacy has

attended a year of vet school," Selma said.

"I guess that's good enough for me," I said. "I was

delivered by a vet."

Trahearne laughed. "Goddammit, Sughrue, if you

were any more country, your feet wouldn't fit shoes,"

he said, then laughed again.

Stacy peeled the dried bloody shirt off my back with

hydrogen peroxide and professional fingers, then she

cleaned off the wounds. The pattern of shot was larger

than I had suspected, circling from the back of my neck

to the middle of my upper arm.

"I'm glad you weren't any closer," I said to Selma.

"You haven't spit up any blood, have you?" Stacy

asked.

"Not lately," I answered.

"Don't try so hard to be funny," she said. It sounded

like medical advice.

"How many pellets?" I asked.

"Eleven," she answered as soon as she finished

counting them.

"What size shot?" I asked.

"Seven and a half," Benjamin answered.

"Steel or lead?"

He had to go over and open a drawer to check the

shell box to answer that. "Steel," he said.

"If you've got some sort of antibiotic salve," I said to

Stacy, "we can leave them in for a few days. "

"I've got probes and some local anesthetic that I use

on the animals," she said. "I could freeze 'em and pop

'em right out, then suture up the wounds."

I looked over my shoulder at her. She had high

cheekbones, dusky skin, and dark brown eyes. If I

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hadn't seen her in action with the ax, I would have

thought her a delicate type.

"What the hell," I said, and she went after her bag.

As she worked on me, Traheame persuaded Benjamin to go down the hill for the bottle of whiskey. For himself, though, not for me. When the boy brought it

back, I had a drink anyway. As soon as Trahearne took

a second hit off it, I made him give me the bottle. I held

it until Stacy finished working on my back. She put the

last circle of tape over the sutures so they wouldn't

catch in the weave of my shirt, then she patted me on

the shoulder lightly.

"What now?" she asked.

"We go get the lady back," I said.

"You know where she is?" Trahearne asked anx-

iously.

"I know how to find out," I said.

"You need some help?" Benjamin asked.

"Right," Stacy said.

"We'll all go," Selma said, and the girl sleeping in

her lap stirred.

It was a great romantic notion, a band of righteous

misfits rescuing the princess, and I even thought about

it for a second, but we already had enough troubles.

"You been in the service?" I asked Benjamin.

"No, sir," he answered, then hung his head.

"You stay with Selma, then," I said. "Help her take

care of things here."

"I've never been in the service either," Stacy said

with heavy irony, "but I'm meaner than any Marine in

the world, by god, pound for pound."

"I can use you for bait," I said, "but you'H have to be

nice to a creep."

"That should be easy," she said, smiling, "I've spent

my life doing that . "

"Are you afraid?" I asked.

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"Damn right," she said, "but I'm too mad to give a

shit about being afraid."

"It won't be very pretty," I said.

"I can tell you things about ugly that would make

your ears curl up in self-defense, mister," she said.

"Okay," I said, "you're on."

"Take care of her," Selma said in a quiet voice.

"I'll be fine," Stacy said firmly, letting me know that

she damn well meant to take care of herself.

"You all take care," Selma said.

"This is what I'm supposed to do for a living," I said,

which made me laugh. I don't think I sounded full of

joy with the laughter. When I glanced around the

room, nobody would meet my eyes. Except Traheame,

and he looked infinitely sad.

As Stacy, Traheame, and I walked down the trail, he

paused to rest, leaning against a stone outcropping.

"What are we going to do?" he asked, and slapped

me on the shoulder.

"First of all, we're going to stop slapping me on the

shoulder," I said, meaning it as a joke, but he took it

seriously.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Goddamn it, I haven't done

anything right since the war."

"You carne back up the hill with that shotgun," I

said.

"It was all over by the time I got there," he said,

looking up at me. "You're going to need me, aren't

you?" he asked.

"Of course," I said. "Particularly you� plastic

money."

"And what am I supposed to provide?" Stacy asked.

"Your nubile body," I said.

"Well, you ain't gettin' no cherry," she said jauntily,

then led off down the trail.

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After a wildly hectic afternoon down in Denverrenting two cars, buying Stacy a new dress and me a wig and fake mustache, and finding a ground-floor motel

room with a private entrance near the airport-we put

it all together in time for a freshly scrubbed Stacy,

looking sixteen in spite of the twenty-four on her

driver's license, to be sitting in Tricky Dickie's topless

bar on Colfax when Jackson came in after a day at the

office. He was all polyester and .smiles as he arrived for

his vodka martini and his visual fix of female flesh. Just

as I feared, though, he had a hired tough with him.

Stacy had been great--street-wise and tough. The

bartender didn't want to believe her ID at first, and

when she bullied him into giving her a drink, he wasn't

sure he wanted a strange hooker in his place. She set

him straight, then fended off the stag line until he

believed her. When Jackson made his play, she held

him off a bit.

"Listen, man, I'm looking for work," she told him,

"not a party. No citizens, no johns, and no traveling

salesmen , okay?"

"What sort of work were you looking for, honey?"

Jackson asked.

"The same sort of work I was doing back East," she

answered, "until the weather got to me. "

"The weather?"

"The heat, man," she said.

"Oh, yeah," he said as if he had understood all the

time, "right, the heat. What a . . . what sort of work

was that?"

"I'm in the fucking movies, man," she said. "V.'hat

did you think? Hanging paper, maybe? Boosting

groceries? Get off my case and outa my face, okay?"

"Listen, babe," he said as he sidled closer while