Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [4]
“I messed myself. I got to get in the shower,” he said.
“You know where it is,” she said.
“They killed a man.”
She didn’t seem to hear what he had said. She glanced at the cast-iron spiral of steps that led upstairs to the jail. “Can you make it by yourself?”
“I ain’t drunk. I was this morning, but I ain’t now. The guy in charge, I remember his name.” Danny Boy closed his eyes and opened them again. “I think I do.”
“I’ll be upstairs in a minute and open the cell.”
“I hid all the time they was doing it.”
“Say again.”
“I hid behind a big rock. Maybe for fifteen minutes. He was screaming all the while.”
She nodded, her expression neutral. Danny Boy’s eyes were scorched with hangover, his mouth white at the corners with dried mucus, his breath dense and sedimentary, like a load of fruit that had been dumped down a stone well. He waited, although she didn’t know for what. Was it absolution? “Don’t slip on the steps,” she said.
She tapped on Hackberry’s door but opened it without waiting for him to answer. He was on the phone, his eyes drifting to hers. “Thanks for the alert, Ethan. We’ll get back to you if we hear anything,” he said into the receiver. He hung up and seemed to think about the conversation he’d just had, his gaze not actually taking her in. “What’s up?” he said.
“Danny Boy Lorca just came in drunk. He says he saw a man killed.”
“Where?”
“I didn’t get that far. He’s in the shower.”
Hackberry scratched at his cheek. Outside, the American flag was snapping on its pole against a gray sky, the fabric washed so thin that the light showed through the threads. “That was Ethan Riser at the FBI. They’re looking for a federal employee who might have been grabbed by some Mexican drug mules and taken to a prison across the border. An informant said the federal employee could have gotten loose and headed for home.”
“I’ve heard Danny Boy has been digging up dinosaur eggs south of his property.”
“I didn’t know there were any around here,” Hackberry said.
“If they’re out there, he’d be the guy to find them.”
“How’s that?” he said, although he wasn’t really listening.
“A guy who believes he can see the navel of the world from his back window? He says all power comes out of this hole in the ground. Down inside the hole is another world. That’s where the rain and the corn gods live. Compared to a belief system like that, hunting for dinosaur eggs seems like bland stuff.”
“That’s interesting.”
She waited, as though examining his words. “Try this: He says the killing took fifteen minutes to transpire. He says he heard it all. You think this might be the guy the feds are looking for?”
Hackberry bounced his knuckles lightly up and down on the desk blotter and stood up, straightening his back, trying to hide the pain that crept into his face, his outline massive against the window. “Bring your recorder and a pot of coffee, will you?” he said.
THE REPORT DANNY Boy gave of the murder he had witnessed was not one that lent itself to credulity. “You were drinking before you went digging for dinosaur eggs?” Hackberry said.
“No, sir, I hadn’t had a drop in two days.”
“Two days?” Hackberry said.
“Yes, sir, every bit of it. I got eighty-sixed. I didn’t have no more money, anyway.”
“Well, you must have seen what you saw,” Hackberry said. “Want to take a ride?”
Danny Boy didn’t answer. He was sitting on the iron bunk of his cell, wearing lace-up boots without socks and clean jailhouse jeans and a denim shirt, his hair wet from his shower and his skin as dark as smoke. His hands were folded in his lap, his shoulders slumped.
“What’s the problem?” Hackberry said.
“I’m ashamed of what I done.”
“Not helping this guy out?”
“Yes, sir. They was talking about La Magdalena.”
“Who?”
“A holy woman.”
“Don’t feel so down about this, partner. They would have killed you, too. If they had, you wouldn’t be helping us in the investigation, would you?” Hackberry said.
Danny Boy’s eyes were focused on a spot ten inches in front of him. “You didn