where I propped her head on a stack of paper napkins I got from the bar. I tried to put her far from where Max’s body lay in front of the bar, but the place isn’t that big. Coleman turned her head to look between the legs of the chairs at him and wiped the back of her hand over her eyes.
“You just rest there a minute while I finish staging a scene,” I said.
My back starting to spasm, making me move like Jed Clampett on speed, I went into the office, dabbled my fingers in Cheri’s blood, then went to the kitchen and picked up the shotgun to cover any other fingerprints with my freshly bloody ones to leave no doubt as to who fired the gun. With a towel I wiped off the 1911 that Emery had used on Max, making sure there were none of my prints on it. Then I pressed his fingers against it before resting it next to his right hand.
I knew it wasted a second, but I kicked the man who killed Jessica. I kicked him in the head. It didn’t make me feel any better, but then nothing ever would.
I went back into the bar and, mindless of the remaining blood on my hands, got down two glasses, opened the bottle of Tarantula Tequila. I poured a couple of healthy slugs, knocked back mine, then went back and sat down next to Coleman, noting from the alarmed look on her face that she had come out of her drugged state and just noticed I was covered with gore.
“Here, drink this.” I raised her head and forced down as much of the tequila as she would take to stave off the shock. “We’ve got less than two minutes to talk fast before this place is all sirens and flashing lights and shit, and here’s how it’s going to play out. I killed Emery. You didn’t see it happen because you were out here trying to crawl for help.”
“Why would you do that?” she asked.
“We can go over the whys later. Just listen.”
Coleman’s head rocked back and forth on the pile of napkins. “Emery was a serial killer. They won’t do anything to me.”
“Yes they will,” I said. “I know you’re half in shock and you can’t see the way things will play out. But I can, so you have to listen very carefully. You shot an unarmed man in the back, Snow. It was a righteous kill, but you did it while investigating a case after you were taken off. Second: because no one paid attention to your suspicions of Lynch, Max Coyote is dead. The Tucson Bureau made a royal mess of this case and Special Agent in Charge Roger Morrison is going to be looking for a fall guy to deflect attention from himself so he doesn’t look responsible. You’ll be that guy.”
“I don’t care anymore.”
“So what are you going to do, teach high school or do security for some corporation? Coleman, sweetheart, you’re one of the good guys. You need to do this.”
I could hear the sirens now. “Don’t think I’m going altruistic or noble, Coleman. My life is already in ruins and this won’t make it any worse. I just don’t want to give Morrison the satisfaction of drumming you out of the Bureau.”
“I’m going to tell them the truth.”
“No you’re not, because you can’t do anything but crawl, which means I’ll be out the door first. I’m going to tell them what happened, and if you give them a different story after, they’ll get me for obstruction of justice and I’ll go to prison. I’m putting myself into the perfect lose-lose situation, my dear, so you have no option but to win.”
“You can’t do this.”
We were running out of time. “Oh yes I can. As an added incentive to you, I’ll also tell them you fucked Royal Hughes.”
There went the flashing colored lights through the high windows near the ceiling.
But before facing the SWAT team, I had to spend two more seconds on one more thing. I quickly went into Emery’s office and picked up the jar of pickled pigs’ feet from his desk. There was that little cream-colored edge pressed up against the glass on the inside that I had seen while sitting at the bar, a form and color that almost jibed with the rest of the contents. What I had thought was another instance of my bizarre imaginings.
A voice on a megaphone said, “You are