Giles Blunt - No Such Creature

“Honey, you don’t have to talk to this creep.”

“Really, Rachel. I’ll be all right.”

Rachel looked from Bill to Sabrina, and back to Bill. “I will be watching you right here from this veranda,” she said. “And if you try to haul this young lady off or harm her in any way, I will have the police on your ass so fast it’ll make your head spin. And trust me, Dallas cops aren’t gonna give a shit you were a cop in some lame-ass sink trap like Las Vegas. They’ll just assume you’re stupid and corrupt, like every other Bible-thumpin’ dickhead.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am. Thank you for clarifying.”

Rachel sat down on a wicker chair, making the ice in her lemonade clink.

Sabrina went down the steps and crossed the lawn to a white wooden swing hanging in the shade of an enormous tree. There was a rumble of distant thunder and a heavy dampness in the air. Bill stood before her, cap in hand, looking as penitent as it was possible for a man of his body mass index to look.

“Sabrina,” he said, “I behaved like a jackass, and I am truly sorry. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

“I have no trouble forgiving you, Bill-for what you did to me. But you beat the guy who was kind enough to intervene, and forgiving you for that isn’t up to me.”

“Okay, I am sorry for that too. I know my temper can occasionally get the better of me. It’s an affliction the Lord has donated to me as a test. I hope to do better on that test in future. I’ve prayed on it.”

“You’re always praying, Bill. If you go around beating people, it doesn’t make it better that you pray about it. Nobody cares if you pray or not, but they do care if you smack them around.”

Sabrina sipped from her lemonade and pressed one foot into the grass, pushing the swing around in a tiny circle. From the direction of the veranda came the clink of ice cubes.

Bill twisted his cap. “I’ve been thinking maybe I could enrol in one of those anger management courses? Much as I hate the idea of therapy and all that group candy-ass wallowing. Makes my skin crawl, to tell you the truth. But I’d be willing to undertake it, if you’d come back with me.”

“I can’t go back with you, Bill.”

“But you said you forgive me.”

“I do. I just don’t want to live with you.”

“Aw, Sabrina, don’t you know by now I love you like to die? I’m nearbout crazy with it. I’ll do better, I promise. I’ll make a solemn vow, and you know I would not swear falsely.”

“How did you know I’d be here, anyway?”

“I didn’t. But I was pretty sure you’d be in touch with your aunt, even though I can’t help but notice that that lady is a piece of work. I was hoping to prevail upon her better nature to get a message to you, that’s all. It was just one of the Lord’s tender mercies that he saw fit to bring you to me just as I arrived.”

“Luck, in other words.”

“You say luck, I say the Lord. Who do you think’s in charge of luck?”

The last of Sabrina’s lemonade clattered up the straw. “Bill, thank you for taking me in when I was down. I’m grateful for it-really I am-but I’m moving back to New York and that’s that.”

“Have some mercy, now. You are crushing my spirit. Truly.”

“I’m sorry, Bill.”

“Won’t you at least think on it?”

“There’s nothing to think about. I don’t suppose you’d be able to send my stuff to me when I have a place of my own?”

“Matter of fact, I brought your suitcase with me. Backpack too. I’m not a brute, Sabrina. I knew there was a good chance you wouldn’t appreciate my offer to take you back. Figured I’d leave ’em with your aunt if it come to that.”

“You have them here?”

“They’re in the car.”

To Sabrina’s horror, Bill knelt on the grass as the first raindrops began to fall and clasped his hands in front of his chest. This brought a furious rattle of ice cubes from the veranda.

“Sabrina, looky here now. I’m on my knees. Do you know what that costs a man of my prideful nature? This is me, William P. Bullard, begging you. Abasing myself before you. Heaven sake, girl, what more can you require of a man?”

“Well,” Sabrina said, “I’d rather just have my luggage.”

“He gave it to you?” Owen said. “He didn’t hit you again, did he?”

“No, he didn’t hit me. He tried to get me to go back to Vegas with him. I actually felt sorry for him.”

He touched her shoulder. “Don’t be sad. I’m really glad you didn’t go back with him.”

“Back with whom?” Max said as he came into the Rocket, spotted with rain and carrying a bag of groceries. He had the most remarkable powers of recovery Sabrina had ever witnessed. He didn’t seem even the slightest bit troubled by his demented episode of the day before.

“Bill showed up at my aunt’s,” Sabrina said.

Max set the groceries down on the table and mopped at his brow. “My dear, please tell me that isn’t true. Have you been phoning him again?”

“He snooped through my address books. He figured I’d show up at Rachel’s and he just happened to be there when we got back from shopping.”

“And now I suppose he’s followed you back to our very doorstep and we can look forward to having a Bible-spouting former constable on our tail for the rest of our natural lives.”

“He didn’t follow me. I made him promise not to.”

“Oh, good. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that no law enforcement officer, former or otherwise, would ever break a promise.”

“Max,” Owen put in, “she said he didn’t follow her. Did you see any strange cars outside?”

“I did not. But my mind misgives some consequence,” Max said, pointing upward, “yet hanging in the stars.”

“It’s not as if he’s still a cop. He just wants Sabrina back. He doesn’t know anything about us, why should he?”

“My lad, I know not. But I do know the former Officer Bullard has popped up, gopherlike, in two separate locations, and I am not yet so feeble-minded as to put it down to coincidence. The young lady is fetching-not to mention the daughter of my long-time friend-but forgive me if I find it unnerving to be associated with an actual police magnet. My dear,” he added to Sabrina, “I mean that in the most affectionate way.”

They’d been following the old man and the kid since Vegas, and now the girl too. They got Tucson from Pookie-his hotel booking in the datebook section of his PalmPilot. Roscoe had given them Dallas, and Zig had insisted on lugging the sap all the way to Dallas in case he might know any more. There were only half a dozen RV parks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and of these only two had facilities big enough for vehicles the size of Max Maxwell’s Winnebago. Which was how they’d tracked them to the Texas-T trailer park. Clem and Stu had split the bird-dog duties, meaning Clem had to waste his entire day following this girl around, and he could not for the life of him figure out why.

Clem seriously believed that if he stayed in the car another minute he was going to go out of his screaming mind. Parked in the McDonald’s lot, staring at the Texas-T sign-pretty soon they’d have to haul him off to a psychiatric hospital, to spend the rest of his days drooling before a TV set playing America’s Funniest Home Videos or some other lame-ass show he’d never watched except by accident in a bar maybe.

He’d been here for two hours now, rain tapping on the car roof and dribbling down the windshield. He couldn’t listen to the radio any longer without running the battery down. He snatched up his cellphone and called Zig.

“How much longer you expect me to do this?”