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"Lou, the shooter fired at me twice," I said. "I put eight rounds into the Buick. I think he's still in there."
"What?" he said, and ripped his .357 from his belt holster. Then he said to the two uniformed cops, "What have you fucking guys been doin' out here?"
"Hey, Lou, come on. We didn't know who this—"
"Shut up," he said, walked up to the Buick, looked inside, then jerked open the passenger door. The interior light went on.
"What is it?" the cop with the shotgun said.
Lou didn't answer. He replaced his revolver in his holster and reached down with his right hand and felt something on the floor of the automobile.
I walked toward him. "Lou?" I said.
His hands felt around on the seat of the car, then he stepped back and studied the ground and the weeds around his feet as though he were looking for something.
"Lou?"
"She's dead, Dave. It looks like she caught one right through the mouth."
"She?" I said. I felt the blood drain from my heart.
"You popped Amber Martinez," he said.
I started forward and he caught my arm. The headlights of the city police car were blinding in the rain. He pulled me past the open passenger door, and I saw a diminutive woman in an embryonic position, a white thigh through a slit in a cocktail dress, a mat of brown hair that stuck wetly to the floor carpet.
Our faces were turned in the opposite direction from the city cops'. Lou's mouth was an inch from my ear. I could smell cigarettes, bourbon, and mints on his breath.
"Dave, there's no fucking gun," he whispered hoarsely.
"I saw the muzzle flashes. I heard the reports."
"It's not there. I got a throw-down in my glove compartment. Tell me to do it."
I stared woodenly at the two uniformed cops, who stood in hulking silhouette against their headlights like gargoyles awaiting the breath of life.
Chapter 13
The sheriff called me personally at 5 a.m. the next morning so there would be no mistake about my status with the department: I was suspended without pay. Indefinitely.
It was 7 a.m. and already hot and muggy when Rosie Gomez and I pulled up in front of Red's Bar in her automobile. The white Buick was sti
ll parked across the street. The bar was locked, the blinds closed, the silver sides of the house-trailer entrance creaking with heat.
We walked back and forth in front of the building, feeling dents in the tin, scanning the improvised rain gutters, even studying the woodwork inside the door jamb.
"Could the bullets have struck a car or the pickup truck you took cover behind?" she said.
"Maybe. But I didn't hear them."
She put her hands on her hips and let her eyes rove over the front of the bar again. Then she lifted her hair off the back of her neck. There was a sheen of sweat above the collar of her blouse.
"Well, let's take a look at the Buick before they tow it out of here," she said.
"I really appreciate your doing this, Rosie."
"You'd do the same for me, wouldn't you?"
"Who knows?"
