T Parker - The border Lords

Hood followed these to the edge of the lake bed. Here they stopped or were lost in the creosote bushes that were eking out their livings. There was sagebrush and prickly pear, too. He turned his light before him and saw something unusual on the ground. He nearly stepped on it. He picked it up and shone the light on it. Paper. Hundreds of pages crushed into a rough ball. He recognized from boyhood the sheerness of it, and the small biblical typeface. Genesis. Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy. He pushed them into the pocket of his windbreaker.

Hood scanned the brush with his light. Pages everywhere, some wadded tightly, others flapping alone, some still bound and fanned by the wind. Hood could hear the soft hiss of sand blowing against the paper. He went from one to the next, collecting and examining each in his light. One blew loose in the wind but he snatched it back. Chronicles, Ezra, Proverbs, Jeremiah. He stuffed all of them into the pocket, too. Samuel, Kings. Some were torn down, and some across, and some had been ripped into small pieces that flickered against the bushes in his light beam and blew from his hands when he tried to gather them.

In the midst of these torn and scattered books Hood found a white leather binding. In his flashlight beam he saw the words HOLY BIBLE embossed in gold. Below that, in smaller letters, was written, "Sean William Ozburn." There were no pages left in it, just glue and tattered edges along the inside spine. Hood recognized it as the cover of the book that Ozburn had held in his hands while he preached to the strange congregation in the grasslands of a country he couldn't identify. In his video to Seliah, he had never opened it.

Hood held the emptied cover and looked around him at the pages shivering in the wind. He pictured Ozburn standing out here at the end of the world, just him and his crumbling faith and his dog. Hood could see him well and he understood what Oz was feeling: He has healed Silvia and seen the curandera and heard the story of Batista. He has seen Batista's end and in this he has seen his own end. He is afraid. He doesn't know what is happening. He walks out here to the edge of the lake bed with his Bible. He tries to read from the truth that has always sustained him. But he can't read, Hood knows: Sean can't read because he can't believe, and he can't believe because he feels only pain and madness. He tries to pray but he can't even do that. He became furious and the prayer became a scream and the scream became a howl. So, starting logically, in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, Sean yanks out the foundation of his belief and throws it into the desert for the wind.

The next day Hood drove up to the Valley Center ranch where three years ago he had interviewed Bradley Jones's mother, Suzanne. It was Hood's first assignment as a prospective LASD homicide detective and he'd made a fool of himself that morning with her.

Now Bradley's voice came over the intercom as Hood waited at the gate. A moment later it slid open and a pack of dogs boiled around Hood's old IROC Camaro as he drove in. The meadow grasses had gone to tawny brown that shimmered in the crisp October light. He looked out to the ranch house and the big barn and the casitas up on the hillside.

He drove past the barnyard where Bradley and Erin had gotten married last year. There had been a stage for musicians and an absinthe bar and a dance floor and the bullring in which Bradley had nearly gotten himself killed. Hood remembered how lovely his companion, Beth, had been that day, and he remembered the musicians who played, and the tents set up in the meadow for the guests, and Beth taking him into their tent that night. Oh, what a night that was.

Hood parked up by the ranch house, in the same spot he'd parked four years ago. Instead of Suzanne watching him from the porch deck, it was her son. Hood got out.

"That car is still your best quality," said Bradley.

"It's not for sale."

"I could steal it."

"How's the wounded hero? I saw you faint on TV."

"That was my sensitive side showing through."

"Musta hurt," said Hood.

"The thought crossed my mind that I'd die of that damned little thing and never get to see Erin again."

"That would be a high price to pay, Bradley. Though it's a hard fact that you don't deserve her."

"I've told her a million times but it doesn't change her mind. Come on up. We can sit in the breakfast room where you tried to seduce my mother."

"That's not exactly what happened." Hood pictured Suzanne in her wrinkled periwinkle nightshirt, the sun on her hair and her eyes on him.

"I was there, don't forget."

"Let's walk," said Hood. "I like this day."

Bradley went inside and came out with two bottles of beer. He launched one down at Hood, who made a good catch. They walked out into the barnyard and stood in the shade of the oak tree. Hood watched a pair of young red-shouldered hawks wheel above in the pale blue sky, keening sharply.

"Congratulations on freeing the boy," said Hood.

"We stumbled into him. Pure luck."

"You've got a lot of that."

"The kid had the brains to set off a silent alarm wired to us."

"I hear they're having trouble finding a record of it."

"Yeah, well, lots of things get lost at HQ. Or maybe the media got it wrong and there never was an alarm."

"Well, then, how did you choose that house?"

"Dispatch chose it, Charlie." Bradley moved away from Hood and faced him. "Now what?"

"Just wondering."

"You're like a prying old woman sometimes, Charlie. Tell me something interesting about Blowdown."

Hood told him they were sticking it to the gunrunners-they'd recovered sixty-two firearms in a buy last week. And ATF had spent a lot of time and money getting Spanish versions of their computer gun tracing programs into the hands of law enforcement officers and prosecutors all over Mexico.

"I saw the gold-plated Uzis that DEA and the Mexican army found in the La Familia bust," said Bradley. "Saw the pictures, I mean. What, ten or twenty of them? And fifty gold-plated pistols?"

Hood absorbed the insult with a nod and a smile. "They need them to do battle with the thousand Love Thirty-twos some enterprising gringos sold to the North Baja Cartel."

Bradley laughed derisively and shook his head. "You're incorrigible. I can't wait to be your boss someday."

"I saw you and Pace, and I saw the guns."

"What you thought were guns turned out to be new jeans we'd bought for poor kids south of the border. The reporters even got that right. That was egg on ATF's face, Charlie. And not even you can hold me accountable for Ron Pace."

"The Pace Arms building in Costa Mesa is empty now. Ron still owns it but the penthouse is abandoned. Where did he go?"

"I don't know. I'd tell you if I did, because we're on the same side, Hood. I'm a deputy sheriff now, remember?"

For the next few minutes they traded deputy gossip-the union negotiations, the new LASD pursuit policies, county health care cuts, who'd get the current sheriff's backing when he decided to step down. Hood enjoyed this. It was like having a younger brother. He was the youngest of the five by a lot, always looking up at the rest-last to arrive, last to know, last to be included-his boyhood a series of good-byes as his siblings grew and left. He was closer to them now as adults than they'd been as children. Slightly.

Back in the house they barged in on Erin in her studio. She was putting new strings on a Gibson Hummingbird and when she saw Hood she smiled and rose and kissed him on the cheek.

"Erin? Charlie's here to make his usual baseless accusations, but I thought you'd want to see him."

She cut a hard glance at her husband then smiled at Hood. "What did he do now?"