Hunters Run Page 0,102

Joe. There were a lot of people there who said that the guy she was with was pushing it with her pretty hard. A big shot. Made some remarks. Twisted her arm when she tried to leave or something. And then Johnny Joe got into it. Maybe saved her."

The silence hung between them, pressing. Ramon's neck throbbed where the sahael had bound him. The monitors chirped and hummed. He knows, Ramon thought. They grabbed Johnny Joe so they can show the Enye that they're on top of it, and this pendejo fucking well knows it's a frame. He's waiting for me to fuck up so they can grab me for it instead.

"Weird, all right."

"Why do you think he'd do something like that?" the constable asked. "Put himself in harm's way to protect a woman he didn't even know?"

Come on. Tell me what a hero he was. Tell me how he defended the weak. Tell yourself what a good man you are, and maybe in the end, you can even let slip that the big man was really you and not Johnny Joe. Ramon grinned. There was a time he might even have fallen for it.

"Man, you can't figure someone like Johnny Joe! You might as well not try, you know? He's like a whole different species."

The constable shifted his weight, annoyance flashing in his eyes.

"Sorry I couldn't help you out," Ramon said. "I sure wish I knew old Johnny Joe better. You know, so I could help. But we just didn't hang out together much. Maybe the guy just pissed him off, you know? Which was never hard to do. Maybe Johnny Joe just did a good thing for once in his life. Even a badass like him might not like to see some little girl getting slapped around, eh? Especially if maybe he had his eye on her himself." He exchanged level glances with the cop, who was looking sour. "There anything else? 'Cause I'm getting kinda tired."

"Maybe later," the constable said. "You were lucky, getting back to Fiddler's Jump. All that happened out there - the van getting destroyed, hurting yourself with the knife like that. It's really unbelievable."

Meaning that you don't believe me, Ramon thought. We ll, prove something, and then come see me. Asshole.

"I'm blessed," Ramon said, nodding like a pious idiot drunk on incense and communion wine. "Truly blessed. God ain't done with me yet, you know?"

"No, He's not. You take care, Se?or Espejo. I'll be in touch if there's anything more I need to ask you."

"Anything I can do to help," Ramon said, almost sorry that the constable was rising from the bed. Ramon liked the feel of winning. There were a few more insincere pleasantries exchanged, and then the constable was gone. Ramon lay back against his pillow and thought his way through it all.

They knew that Johnny Joe, for all his failings as a good citizen and an upright human being, hadn't killed the European. He was just the convenient bastard to hang, the scapegoat - and if he was the wrong man, well, shit, at least he deserved it for some other time when he'd killed and gotten away with it. The constable knew it was shit. Hell, the whole colony probably knew it was shit. But what were they gonna do? Tell the Enye that they'd screwed up? That they couldn't even catch the right man? That they'd lied? That would be suicide. The investigation was closed. If Ramon didn't open it again for them, and he wasn't about to do that, it would stay closed.

Not that the eaters-of-the-young would care, one way or the other. What humans did among themselves didn't matter, because humanity wasn't a species that the Enye cared about, except where they were useful. Impressing them with the colony's sense of law and justice and righteousness was like a pack of dogs trying to impress their catcher by howling in harmony. But the governor didn't know that, and so, perversely, the way that they all failed to understand the aliens around them was going to save Ramon's ass. He might be the next one strung up when a convenient perpetrator was needed to take the fall for something, but this time, for this murder, the government of the colony was going to give him a pass. What else could they do?

A weight lifted from him, and he laughed with the relief. His initial plan had worked. He'd been in the wilderness long enough that the problem