what Lydia needed, like her own mother didn’t know as much as some stranger off the wheat fields.
“This time he showed up when Lydia was—doing what she was doing. He blew up at the men, he hit one hard enough that there was blood all over his face. The other men left and this Coop charged into the house, even though I was yelling at him to stop, that he was trespassing! Of course, I went in after. Ty, Mr. Zamir, he was at work.”
When she stopped again, I said gently, “Was he assaulting Lydia?”
“She was in his arms, he was patting her hair, but she was in his arms naked, and that horrible dog was with him.”
She paused, then added defiantly, “I went to get our gun. I shot him.”
“You did?” My voice came out in a startled squeak. “How badly did you hurt him?”
“I missed, but the bullet grazed the dog, its shoulder, and then Lydia was screaming at me that I was a monster, how could she live with a monster, she wanted Coop’s help. She wouldn’t go to a doctor, but she wanted this crazy man who broke someone’s nose and came into her room when she was—was—”
She stopped, spittle covering the sides of her mouth. She was panting in little bursts. No wonder the dog had shown hackle at the sound of her voice.
“She left a few days later.”
“With Coop?”
“No. He came around, wanting to see her, and she was gone. She hadn’t told him. I didn’t tell him. He said he wanted me to pay his damned dog’s veterinary bill. I told him he had a hell of a nerve, trying to rape my daughter and wanting me to pay his bills.”
The clouds had thickened, and the wind was rising, bending the line of trees in front of us.
“What’s his name, besides Coop?” I asked.
“I never heard,” she muttered.
“Do you know anything about him?” I couldn’t keep a despairing keening out of my voice. “Anything that would help me find him?”
“He was an environmental fanatic. When he found out Ty—Mr. Zamir—worked for Sea-2-Sea he almost hit him.”
“Where does he come from?”
She stood for a long time, kneading the back of the bench, trying to regain her self-control. She finally said, in a quiet voice, “He went to K-State, I think. At least, he wore a Wildcats cap and T-shirt. There’s a big rivalry between K-State and the Lawrence campus, the Jayhawks—you wouldn’t wear Wildcats gear around here unless you liked getting people stirred up.”
38
Yanking Each Other’s Chains
The storm broke when we got on the highway, great sheets of water that bubbled across the road like a creek. I had the air-conditioning on and the wipers running full bore, but Bear was whimpering in fear. I opened a window for him and let the wave of water flood the passenger seat, splashing onto me.
Lightning streaked all around the horizon, making me feel that I was in a glass paperweight shaken by a giant hand. A siren sounded, tornado warning. I know you’re supposed to stop, get out of your car, lie flat in a ditch, but I wanted to get as far from Debbie Zamir as I could.
By the time we crept into town and made it to our motel, the sirens had stopped. The rain was still falling, but the wind had eased and the lightning had ended. Bear and I were two sodden lumps as we climbed to our second-floor room. There were two towels, one for each of us.
I sat on the floor next to him, and he laid his heavy head on my knees. “She shot you, huh?” I ran my fingers through his shoulders, but the wound was three years old. I couldn’t feel the scar. “She is a scary person, isn’t she? A good match for your boy, Coop—rockets that shoot off in random directions at unpredictable times. Poor Tyler, Poor Lydia. Poor Bear.”
I was hungry, but too weary to hunt for food. I gave Bear a double ration of his dinner, but settled for a bag of peanuts from a vending machine for myself.
In the morning, I took some extra towels from the housekeeper and tried to dry out the Mustang, but the rain had soaked into the floor mats and the upholstery. The car would need a decontamination cleaning when I got back to Chicago. For now, I’d drive with the windows open unless it started to rain again—in which case, Bear would have to tough it