Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [39]
Boyd, way up in front at the wheel of the stretch, couldn’t believe it. The two buddy-buddy already. He watched them in the rearview mirror, next to each other on the backseat; Ms. Conlan, her legs crossed in expensive-looking tan slacks, a preppy black sport coat, sunglasses. Raylan sitting up straight but looked at ease, still wearing his cowboy hat, Ms. Conlan going easy on him, not scaring the shit out of him yet. Boyd looked at his controls now and turned the speaker on back there—to tell the driver what you wanted without raising your voice—and kept it low, both their voices coming to him, Ms. Conlan asking Raylan about the nurse who stole kidneys, saying she read about it in the paper.
You know what I’ve wondered?” Carol said. “If you ever got it on with Layla. She was attractive, wasn’t she?”
“You’re askin me,” Raylan said, “since she’s good-looking, did I try to get her in bed?”
Carol paused. “Did you?”
“By the time we met I was on to her.”
She wouldn’t let go of it. Now Carol said, “But if you didn’t know what she was up to . . . ?”
“My boss asked me the same thing. He said if I hooked up with her, not knowing what she did, I’d be laying in an alley missing my kidneys.”
“So you set out to arrest Layla the transplant nurse and shot her instead.”
Raylan waited. It wasn’t a question.
“What was it like,” Carol said, “shooting a woman? Was it different?”
“I can’t say you get use to shooting anybody. As a rule, women aren’t into crimes where they’d get shot by people in law enforcement. So we don’t get that many opportunities to shoot women.”
Let her chew on that.
She didn’t seem to mind it, saying, “With Layla, did you hesitate?”
“I had, I’d be dead,” Raylan said.
She seemed done with shooting women and said, “You’ve worked as a coal miner.”
He didn’t answer and Carol said, “Isn’t that true?”
“My boss told me not to open my mouth unless you asked me a question. Yeah, I dug coal, when we weren’t on strike.”
“Do you still think like a coal miner?”
“I don’t have his problems, finding work, getting pushed around by the company.”
“Your attitude about the companies hasn’t changed.”
“I think miners’ complaints are all real. A miner’s injured on the job, he keeps working or you fire him.”
Carol held up her hand to Raylan and said in a quiet voice, “Boyd, where’d you put the Cokes?”
Raylan watched him look at the mirror.
“They’re on the other side from you, by Raylan.”
Carol said, “Turn off the speaker.”
“Oh, was it on?”
She said to Raylan, “He lies, doesn’t he?”
“It’s his nature,” Raylan said. “I’m looking at him for shootin Otis Culpepper.”
Carol said, “You know I was there.”
“I understand you told the authorities you were by the trailer,” Raylan said, “when Otis fired his shotgun at you.”
Carol nodded, brushing her blond hair away from her face. She said, “I was coming out,” and started to smile. She knew what he was about to tell her but Raylan said it anyway.
“No buckshot hit the trailer where you were standing. There aren’t any marks or dents in it.”
She said, “Then he missed, didn’t he?”
“From thirty feet, where Boyd drilled him.”
Carol said, “Raylan,” and put her hand on his knee. “Your job is to look out for me. You don’t investigate a matter that would bring me in as a witness, I don’t have time. Just watch my back, all right? I think this meeting could become physical.”
She was through talking about Otis, Carol looking out the window now.
“It’s so green . . . the trees in the hills come so close. Like they want to envelop us.”
“Pretty soon,” Raylan said, “you’ll see the ridge going bald, but it still causes people living below to fuss. Now they have rocks and bare earth envelopin them.”
“Be nice,” Carol said.
Boyd didn’t hear them once she caught him listening.
He’d look at the mirror and he’d see them talking most of the whole way to Cumberland on 119. He turned on the speaker—hell with her—saying, “You like, I could direct your attention to some points of interest.”
Carol’s voice said, “No, we wouldn’t.”
He thought of what he’d recite had she let him. Lynch,