had pooled and dried on top of the dirt. Pam Tibbs squatted down and looked at the grass and the broken blades and the depressions in it and the areas where the blood smears had taken on the characteristics of a body drag. She stood up and walked back toward the cruiser, in the direction of the truck stop and diner, and squatted down again. “I’d say there were two vehicles here, Sheriff,” she said. “My guess is the victim was shot about here, close to vehicle one, then was dragged, or dragged himself, on up to vehicle two. But why would the shooter throw away the weapon?”

“Maybe it wasn’t his. Or rather, it wasn’t hers,” Hackberry said.

“You want to print me and that Hispanic boy to exclude us when you dust the gun?” Ricker said.

“Yep. And we need to wrap the crime scene. Some feds will probably be talking to you later.”

“What the hell the feds want with me?”

“You heard about all those Asian women who were murdered?”

“That’s what this is about? I got enough grief, Sheriff.”

“That makes two of us. Welcome to the New American Empire, Cap.”

5

AS HE LAY in a bed with a view of a chicken yard, a railed pen with six goats inside it, and a bladeless, rusted slip of a windmill strung with dead brush blown from a field of weeds, the man whose nickname was Preacher could not get the woman out of his mind, nor the scent of her fear and sweat and perfume while he wrestled with her on the ground, nor the expression on her face when she fired the .38 round through the top of his foot, exploding a jet of blood from the sole of his shoe. Her expression hadn’t been one of shock or pity, as Preacher would have expected; it had been one of triumph.

No, that wasn’t it, either. What he had seen in her face was loathing and disgust. She had fried his eyes with wasp spray, taken his weapon, shot him at close quarters, crushed his cell phone with her tire, and left him to bleed out like a piece of roadkill. She had also taken the time to call him bubba and inform him he had gotten off easy. She had done all this to a man considered by some, in terms of potential, to be one notch below the scourge of God.

The sheaf of bandages and tape on his calf smelled of medicinal salve and dried blood, but the pain pills he had eaten and the veterinarian’s injection had numbed the nerves down to the ankle. The plaster cast on his foot was another matter. It felt like wet cement on his skin, and the heat and sweat and friction it generated turned his wound into an aching misery. Twenty minutes ago, the electric power had failed and the fan on the table by his bed had died. Now he could feel the heat and humidity intensifying in the walls, the tin roof expanding, pinging like a banjo string.

“Put some more ice on my foot,” he said to Jesus, the Hispanic man who owned the house.

“It melted.”

“Did you call the power company?”

“We don’t got a phone, boss. When it gets hot like this, we got brownouts. After the day gets cooler, the electricity goes back on.”

Preacher pressed the back of his head into the pillow and stared at the ceiling. The room was sweltering, and he could smell a growing stench from inside the hospital gown he had worn for two days. When he closed his eyes, he saw the girl’s face again, and it filled him with both desire and resentment for the sexual passion she excited in him. Hugo had brought him his .45 auto. It was a 1911 model—simple in design, always dependable, effective in ways most people couldn’t imagine. Preacher ran his hand along the bottom of his mattress and felt the hardness of the .45’s frame. He thought of the girl, her deep-set eyes and her chestnut hair that was curled at the tips, and the way her tongue and teeth looked when she opened her mouth. He held the last image in his mind for a long time. “Tell your wife to get a sponge and wash me,” he said.

“I can bathe you.”

“I look like a maricón to you?” Preacher said, grinning.

“I’ll ask her, boss.”

“Don’t ask. Tell her. Hugo paid you enough money, didn’t he? For you and your family and the veterinarian who left me