Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [179]
HACKBERRY HOLLAND WAS reading a biography of T. E. Lawrence under a lamp by his front window when he heard thunder rolling in the clouds far to the south, reverberating in the hills, where occasionally a flash of dry lightning would flicker and then die like a wet match. The book was written by Michael Korda and dealt with the dissolution of empires and a new type of warfare, what came to be known as “wars of insurgency,” all of which had their model among the sand dunes and date palms of Arabia. As Hackberry read the lines describing the white glare of the Arabian desert, he thought of the snow that had blanketed the hills south of the Yalu the first morning he had seen Chinese troops in their quilted uniforms, tens of thousands of them, many of them wearing tennis shoes, marching out of the white brilliance of the snowfield, heedless of the automatic-weapons fire that danced across the fields and the artillery rounds that blew geysers of snow and ice and dirt and rock in their midst.
He closed the book and placed it on his knee and stared out the window. Not far down the road, he could see a tree limb that had fallen across the telephone line that led to his house. Just as he got up to check the phone, he saw a cruiser turn off the road into his drive, its emergency bar rippling, its siren off. Hackberry stepped out on the front porch and watched R. C. Bevins get out of the cruiser and walk toward him on the flagstones, his face somber. “You tried to call?” Hackberry said.
“Yes, sir, your phone’s out. Your cell must be off, too.”
“It’s in my truck. What is it, R.C.?”
“We’ve got a homicide at the Ling place. The victim appears to be Hispanic. From the exit wound in his head, I’d say somebody used a hollow-point. A ten-year-old girl had been left in Ms. Ling’s care and saw it all. When her mother came for her, she found the girl locked in a pantry. Ms. Ling is gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“From what the little girl said, there were six guys in masks. They took Ms. Ling and a friend of the dead man on a helicopter.”
“How long ago?”
“A couple of hours.”
“Did you print the victim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get a priority with AFIS.”
“Pam is already on it. Who do you reckon are the guys with the chopper?”
“Josef Sholokoff’s people.”
“The little girl said the dead man and his friend spoke Spanish. She also said the friend had a pistol on one hip and a long knife on the other.”
“What else did she say about him?”
“She said he was tall and that he had funny shoulders. She said they were too wide, like he had a stick pushed sideways inside his shirt.”
“That’s Krill.”
“What would he be doing at Ms. Ling’s place?”
“I don’t have any idea, none at all.”
“You okay, Sheriff?”
“How long have you been trying to get me?”
“About fifteen minutes. There wasn’t no way you could know the line was down.”
“Was Ms. Ling hurt?”
“The little girl said a guy shoved her down. The same guy held a knife at the little girl’s throat. She said they all had gloves on, and the shooter called the dead man a greaseball. You think these are the same guys who crucified Cody Daniels?”
“What’s your opinion?”
R.C. scratched at his eyebrow. “I think we got a special breed on our hands,” he said. “I think all this is related to that Barnum boy we got locked in our jail. I’m not sure if we done the right thing on that.”
PAM TIBBS WAS waiting for Hackberry when he arrived at the jail. She was not wearing makeup, and there were circles under her eyes. “What do you want to do?” she asked.
“About what?” he said.
“Everything.”
“Did you talk to the FBI yet?”
“I reported the homicide and the kidnapping. I didn’t mention our boy in isolation,” she said.
“You’re uncomfortable with that?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing, Hack. I don’t know what the plan is.”
“They’re going to call.”
“The abductors are?”
“You bet.”
“Then what?”
“We’ve got what they want. As long as Barnum stays in our hands, Anton Ling will be kept alive.”
“Hack, they wouldn