فصل 06 - بخش 10

6

They were silent for a bit, thinking. Then Lovie spoke up. ‘El Cuco, you called him,’ she said to Holly.

‘Yes.’

The old woman nodded, tapping her arthritis-swollen fingers on her oxygen bottle. ‘When I was a little girl, the Mex kids called him Cucuy and the Anglos called him Kookie, or Chookie, or just the Chook. I even had a pitcher book about that sucker.’

‘I bet I had the same one,’ Yune said. ‘My abuela gave it to me. A giant with one big red ear?’

‘S?, mi amigo.’ Lovie took out her cigarettes and lit one. She chuffed out smoke, coughed, and went on. ‘In the story, there were three sisters. The youngest one cooked and cleaned and did all the other chores. The two older girls were lazy and made fun of her. El Cucuy came. The house was locked, but he looked like their papi, so they let him in. He took the bad sisters to teach them a lesson. He left the good one who worked so hard for the daddy who was raising the girls on his own. Do you remember?’

‘Sure,’ Yune said. ‘You don’t forget the stories you hear when you’re just a kid. That storybook version of El Cucuy was supposed to be a good guy, but all I remember is how scared I was when he dragged the girls up the mountain to his cave. Las ni?as lloraban y le rogaban que las soltara. The little girls cried and begged him to let them go.’

‘Yes,’ Lovie said. ‘And in the end, he did and those bad girls changed their ways. That’s the storybook version. But the real cucuy don’t let the children go, no matter how much they cry and beg. You all know that, don’t you? You’ve seen his work.’

‘So you believe it, too,’ Howie said.

Lovie shrugged. ‘Like they say, quien sabe? Did I ever believe in el chupacabra? What the old los indios call the goat-sucker?’ She snorted. ‘No more than I believe in bigfoot. But there are strange things, just the same. Once – it was on Good Friday, at Blessed Sacrament on Galveston Street – I saw a statue of the Virgin Mary cry tears of blood. We all saw it. Later, Father Joaquim said it was just wet rust from under the eaves running down her face, but we all knew better. Father did, too. You could see it in his eyes.’ She swung her gaze back to Holly. ‘You said you’d seen things yourself.’

‘Yes,’ Holly said quietly. ‘I believe there’s something. It may not be the traditional El Cuco, but is it the thing the legends are based on? I think so.’

‘The boy and those girls you told about, he drank their blood and ate their flesh? This outsider?’

‘He might have,’ Alec said. ‘Based on the crime scenes, it’s possible.’

‘And now he’s me,’ Bolton said. ‘That’s what you think. All he needed was some of my blood. Did he drink it?’

No one answered him, but Ralph could actually see the thing that looked like Terry Maitland doing just that. He could see it with dreadful clarity. That was how far this insanity had gotten into his head.

‘Was that him here last night, skulking around?’

‘Maybe not physically here,’ Holly said, ‘and he may not be you just yet. He might still be becoming you.’

‘Maybe he was checking the place out,’ Yune said.

Maybe he was trying to find out about us, Ralph thought. And if he was, he did. Claude knew we were coming.

‘So what is going to happen now?’ Lovie demanded. ‘Is he gonna kill another kid or two in Plainville or in Austin, and try to get my boy blamed for it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Holly said. ‘I doubt if he’s strong enough yet. It was months between Heath Holmes and Terry Maitland. And he’s been … active.’

‘There’s something else, too,’ Yune said. ‘A practical aspect. This part of the country’s gotten hot for him. If he’s smart – and he must be, to have survived this long – he’ll want to move on.’

That felt right. Ralph could see Holly’s outsider putting his Claude Bolton face and muscular Claude Bolton body on a bus or a train in Austin and heading into the golden west. Las Vegas, maybe. Or Los Angeles. Where there might be another accidental encounter with a man (or even a woman – who knew), and a little more blood spilled. Another link in the chain.

The opening bars of Selena’s ‘Baila Esta Cumbia’ came from Yune’s breast pocket. He looked startled.

Claude grinned. ‘Oh yeah. We got coverage even out here. Twenty-first century, man.’

Yune took out his phone, looked at the screen, and said, ‘Montgomery County PD. I better answer this. Excuse me.’

Holly looked startled, even alarmed, as he took the call and walked out on the porch with ‘Hello, this is Lieutenant Sablo’ trailing after him. Holly excused herself as well, and followed him.

Howie said, ‘Maybe it’s about—’

Ralph shook his head without knowing why. At least not on the surface of his mind.

‘Where’s Montgomery County?’ Claude asked.

‘Arizona,’ Ralph said, before either Howie or Alec could reply. ‘Another matter. Nothing to do with this.’

‘What exactly are we going to do about this?’ Lovie asked. ‘Do you have any idea how to catch this fella? My son is all I got, you know.’

Holly came back in. She went to Lovie, bent, whispered in her ear. When Claude leaned over to eavesdrop, Lovie made a shooing gesture. ‘Go on in the kitchen, son, and bring back those chocolate pinwheel cookies, if they ain’t melted in the heat.’

Claude, obviously trained to mind, went out to the kitchen. Holly continued to whisper, and Lovie’s eyes widened. She nodded. Claude came back with the bag of cookies at the same time Yune came in from the porch, stowing his phone back in his pocket.

‘That was—’ he began, then stopped. Holly had turned slightly, so her back was to Claude. She raised a finger to her lips and shook her head.

‘That was nothing,’ he said. ‘They picked up a guy, but not the one we’ve been looking for.’

Claude put the cookies (which did look sadly melted in their cellophane bag) on the table and glanced around suspiciously. ‘I don’t think that’s what you started to say. What’s going on here?’

Ralph thought that was a good question. Outside on the rural route, a pickup truck trundled by, the lockbox in the bed reflecting bright spears of sun that made him wince.

‘Son,’ Lovie said, ‘I want you to get in your car and drive to Tippit and get us some chicken dinners at Highway Heaven. That’s a pretty good place. We’ll feed these folks, then they can go back t’other way and spend the night at the Indian. It ain’t much, but it’s a roof.’

‘Tippit’s forty miles!’ Claude protested. ‘Dinners for seven people will cost a fortune, and be dead cold when I get back!’

‘I’ll heat everything up on the stove,’ she said calmly, ‘and those dinners’ll be good as new. Go on, now.’

Ralph liked the way Claude put his hands on his hips and looked at her with humor and exasperation. ‘You’re tryin to get rid of me!’

‘That’s it,’ she agreed, butting her cigarette in a tin ashtray heaped with dead soldiers. ‘Because if Miss Holly here is right, what you know, he knows. Maybe that don’t matter, maybe all the cats are out of the bag, but maybe it does. So you be a good son and go get those dinners.’

Howie took out his wallet. ‘Allow me to pay, Claude.’

‘That’s all right,’ Claude said, a trifle sullenly. ‘I can pay. I ain’t broke.’

Howie smiled his big lawyer’s smile. ‘But I insist!’

Claude took the money and tucked it into the wallet chained to his belt. He looked around at his guests, still trying to be sullen, but then he laughed. ‘My ma usually gets what she wants,’ he said. ‘I guess you figured that out by now.’