Wild Blood (6 page)

“There's no need to get riled-up, Rosie,” Root Woman said. “Mr. Cade was just leaving.”

The younger woman fixed Skinner with a suspicious glare as she pecked her grandmother on the cheek. “I just got back from looking in on the Ortega twins. They're both fine, now that their mother's taking your remedy before nursing them.”

Root Woman nodded to herself. “I knew it was milk fever. I could have called that one in my sleep.”

“Please, won't you reconsider?” Skinner pleaded. “I've come all the way from Arkansas …”

“I'm sorry to hear you've come so far for nothing, Mr. Cade, but I'm telling you the truth. I don't know anything about your parents.”

“But …!”

The sound of Rosie's shotgun snapping shut cut him short. “You heard my grandmother, mister,” she said. “Time for you to leave.”

Skinner got to his feet, working hard to keep the anger knotted inside him from exploding. He'd come so far, only to be frustrated by a wizened crone and her gun-toting grandchild.

“Root Woman, please …”

The shotgun swung up in one smooth, menacing motion. “I said git!”

“Okay! Okay! I'm leaving!” Skinner raised his hands and backed away. Only after her was safely out of range did he turn his back of her and stalk off in the direction of the road.

Root Woman's granddaughter lowered her weapon and frowned. “What was all that about?”

“He wanted me to tell him who his mother is.”

“Did you deliver him?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied evenly.

“Granny, I know you. You know the names of all the women you've ever tended. Why'd you lie to that man?”

“Because I didn't get to be this old, Rosie, without realizing that sometimes you're better off remembering to forget.”

Skinner hadn't exactly been in the best of moods when he left Root Woman's place, and trudging along the road back into town in ninety-degree heat wasn't doing anything to sweeten his disposition.

To get so close to the truth only to run smack into a brick wall—a hundred-year-old wall wearing cowboy boots and a baseball cap, at that—was incredibly frustrating. But what was he supposed to do? Force the old lady to tell him what she knew?

As he wiped at the sweat rolling down his brow, Skinner spotted an adobe building up the road. There were a couple of dusty pickups and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked outside. He grinned and picked up his pace. Maybe he could get a ride into town from one of the locals.

As he drew closer, he saw a neon beer sign flickering in the solitary single plate-glass window and heard muffled music coming from inside. The bar didn't seem to have a name, but there was a hand-lettered notice tacked to the front door:
NO DOGS OR INDIANS ALLOWED
.

Skinner stepped inside, cautiously scanning his surroundings. There was a full bar at the back and a couple of well-worn pool tables near the front door. Hank Williams Jr. was playing from the jukebox. A couple of locals were shooting pool, while what looked like the owner of the Harley drank at the bar. It was hardly the kind of place Skinner usually picked to hang out, but it felt good to get out of the heat and, come to think of it, he could use a beer.

The bartender looked at him funny as he pulled up a stool and sat down.

“Gimme a cold 'un.”

The bartender hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to card him then grunted, producing a bottle of beer from behind the counter. Skinner handed over a couple of crumpled dollars and sat back to enjoy his drink.

Funny how he'd left a dead-end, inbred town stuck out in Southern bayou country, only to end up in an equally moribund and isolated desert community. If anything, Los Lobos was even more depressing than Choctaw County. At least the landscape surrounding Seven Devils looked alive.

Still, he had to admit that the nearby Coyote Mountains were indeed awesome, rising from the desert floor like the hackles of an angry beast. The scenery in Choctaw County was flatter than a pancake. Hell, the levee was the closest thing to a hill he'd ever seen before going off to college. But proximity to such breathtaking vistas didn't seem to have much of an effect on the denizens of Los Lobos County, at least as far as he could tell.

Suddenly a meaty finger prodded his shoulder. “Hey—Hey, you.”

It was the biker who owned the Harley he'd seen parked outside. He was dressed in a pair of grease-stained jeans, an equally dirty T-shirt and wore a pair of steel-toed boots. His beer belly hung over the top of his jeans, exposing several inches of hairy midriff. That and the drooping mustaches he wore made him look like a walrus. He reeked of grease, gasoline, whiskey, and body odor.

“What's fuckin' wrong with you?” the walrus growled. “Can't you fuckin' read?”

Skinner looked at the bartender, whose eyes refused to meet his, then turned to address the biker. “Beg pardon?”

“Don't you get fuckin' cute with me, asshole!” the biker snarled, leaning even further into Skinner's face. His teeth were a grayish yellow color. “You saw the sign on the fuckin' door, didn't ya?”

“Well, I—Uh—”

“Are you a fuckin' injun?”

“No.” He said it without even thinking. It was an automatic response from nineteen years spent thinking of himself as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

“Then you must be a fuckin' dog!” the biker laughed as he punched Skinner in jaw, knocking him to the floor.

He lay there in the sawdust, too dazed to do anything except stare up at his attacker. The biker turned and took the half-finished beer from the bar and up-ended over Skinner's head.

“You shouldn't be messin' with the firewater, Chief! You know that ain't allowed! Now get your lousy prairie nigger ass back to the reservation before I kick it back for you!”

The two locals playing pool paused their game as the jukebox switched from Hank Williams Jr. to Hank III. The bartender still refused to look at Skinner, instead focusing his attention of the glasses he was drying.

“You fuckin' deaf, Tonto? I said leave!” The walrus-bellied biker snarled as he bent down to grab Skinner by the shoulder.

Maybe it was a combination of the frustration and stress from the last two weeks—or perhaps he'd simply had enough of being treated like shit. Whatever the reason, Skinner didn't care if the bastard outweighed him by sixty pounds and could flatten him like a sack of overripe tomatoes. He had had enough of being treated like shit. He came up like a jack-in-the-box, ramming his head into the biker's walrus gut. His adversary doubled over, clutching his midsection as he gasped for air. Skinner then brought his knee into the other man's face as hard as he could. The biker promptly forgot about his beer belly and fell to the floor clutching his nose, swearing through blood and broken teeth. As Skinner stared down at the biker sprawled at his feet, the blunt end of a pool cue made contact with the back of his head. And everything went black.

“… to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

The next thing Skinner knew he was lying facedown in a mixture of sawdust, blood, urine and spilt beer with his arms pinned behind him and someone's knee wedged into the small of his back. Judging from the pain that radiated from every part of his body, his attackers had worked him over pretty good while he was unconscious. And going by the smell, they also pissed on him for good measure.

“Come on, buddy. It's time you paid the judge a little visit.” The deputy helped Skinner to his feet by yanking on his cuffed wrists. It was all Skinner could do to keep from hollering in pain.

“Am I being arrested?” he asked thickly.

The deputy and the bartender shared a smirk. “Catches on pretty quick, don't he?”

“What's the charge?” It was difficult to come across as an indignant taxpayer while handcuffed and reeking of beer and urine, but he still gave it his best.

“Drunk and disorderly.”

“But I didn't start it—”

“Tell it to the judge, kid.”

The deputy led Skinner to the waiting cruiser parked outside the bar. There was no sign of the Harley or the two pickup trucks that were there earlier. It was twilight and the sky was rapidly turning purple as the sun sank behind the nearby mountain range. The deputy pushed Skinner's head down and forward as he helped him into the back seat. Somewhere in the gathering dark, a coyote chorus took up its song. It sounded like the laughter of mad women.

The Los Lobos County Jail proved to be tiny. After being booked at the front desk, Skinner was released into the holding tank and told to wait. His only other companion in the cell was an elderly Navajo who was so drunk Skinner had to look twice to make sure he was breathing. After twenty minutes, the deputy who'd arrested him appeared. “Okay, Cade: time for your phone call.” He unlocked the holding tank and Skinner shuffled out.

“Do I get to see a doctor, too?”

The deputy gave him a precursory glance. “You don't look that bad off to me.”

Skinner had to admit that, outside of a dull ache here and there, his earlier pain had disappeared. He'd always healed fast as a child and had rarely taken ill, even when the measles and mumps had swept through the Choctaw County public school system.

The deputy walked Skinner to the end of the corridor, and then motioned to a pay phone mounted on the wall. “Here's your fifty cents. Knock yourself out, kid.”

Skinner hesitated for a long moment, rubbing the coins between his fingers, and then slid it into the slot. “Operator, I'd like to make a collect call to Lucas Blackwell, area code 870-555-3962.”

He hated calling Luke this way, but what else was there for him to do? He was the closest thing to family Skinner had left. He didn't really expect Luke to make his bail; he just wanted someone, somewhere to know where he was and what was happening to him.

The phone rang five times, then six. On the seventh ring someone picked up the receiver. “Hello?” Although the voice was distorted by distance and static, he realized it wasn't Luke's.

The operator's abruptly came on the line. “I have a long-distance person-to-person call for Lucas Blackwell. Will you accept the charges?”

“This is Phelan, Luke's cousin. Skinner, is that you?”

“Yes, it's me! Phelan, can you put Luke on the phone?”

There was a long pause and then the operator came on the line again. “Sir, will you accept the charges?”

“For God's sake, Phelan!” Skinner shouted. “Say yes!”

“I'll accept the charges,” the farmer said reluctantly.

“Phelan, where's Luke?” Again the uncomfortable silence. “Phelan? Are you there? Speak up!”

“I thought you'd heard,” Luke's cousin replied slowly. “I reckoned that was why you was callin' …”

“Heard about what? Phelan, what's happened? Where's Luke?”

“He's dead.”

Skinner stared at the receiver as if he could see Phelan's cow-eyed, slab-like face in the ear piece. “Dead? How?”

“Shot himself. We found him yesterday evening, stretched out on the bed, dressed in the suit he married your mama in. He stuck the shotgun in his mouth and—well, you get the picture. We're burying him Saturday. Can you make it back in time for the service? Hello?”

Skinner hung up the phone without another word.

Chapter Six

The buzz of the after-hours check-in bell woke Leon Sykes out of a sound sleep, yet again. He emerged from his apartment and stumped toward the night registry, a small cubicle that resembled a drive-up bank teller's booth that faced the parking lot. He rubbed his eyes and peered through the bulletproof glass at the couple waiting for him. They were trash, of course. Hell, all he had to do was look at 'em to know they were no good, especially the guy. Assuming anything with hair that long could be called a ‘guy'. The woman had enough makeup on her face to hide everything from acne scars to five o'clock shadow and wore a skin-tight red sheath that stopped just short of flashing beaver. She giggled as she wriggled against her companion, a young punk with waist-length hair that looked almost white.

“We want a room,” the punk said, his voice was distorted by the speaker into something like the snarl of an animal.

Sykes put a registration card and ballpoint pen into the hopper on his side and punched a button. “That'll be thirty dollars plus a five-dollar key deposit. Thirty-five dollars total. Please fill out the card.”

As the punk fished inside the pockets of his leather jacket, Sykes noticed that the sleeves raggedly ended at the shoulder, as if chewed off by a dog. The younger man tossed a fistful of wadded bills into the hopper and then scribbled a signature on the card. As he did so, Sykes noticed a tattoo shaped like the head of a wolf on the top of his left hand. After he took the money, Sykes passed a keycard back through the machine. Meanwhile, the bimbo continued to rub herself against the punk like she was trying to start a fire without matches.

The punk grunted something and headed in the direction of the motel units, his lady friend in tow. Sykes watched them go, trying to decide whether he was envious or disgusted.

He went back to bed and completely forgot about the lovebirds until ten o'clock the next morning, when Juanita the maid rushed into the front office, babbling hysterically in Spanish. Once he got her calmed down enough to understand what she was saying, he hung the ‘Sorry We're Closed' sign in the door of the lobby and hurried to check out Room Three-Sixteen.

Juanita's linen cart stood outside the open door, right where she'd left it. Swallowing hard, Sykes steeled himself for what might be inside. In the six years he'd spent as the owner-operator of a hot-sheets motel, he'd seen a lot of nasty stuff. It was his learned opinion that people did shit in cheap motel rooms they'd never dream of doing in their own homes.