BBH01 - Cimarron Rose by James Lee Burke

home?"
    'After school Darl catches the kid out in front of
everybody and says, "Hey, a snarf is a guy who gets off sniffing girls'
bicycle seats. But I had you made wrong. You don't get an S. You get an
F for frump. That's a guy cuts farts in the bathtub and bites the
bubbles."'
    Lucas's cheeks were blotched with color.
    'Would Darl beat a girl with his fists, Lucas?'
    'My father needs me back in the field,' he answered.
     
    That evening I opened up all the
windows in the
third floor of my house and let the breeze fill the rooms with the
smells of alfalfa and distant rain and ozone and dust blowing out of
the fields.
    The house seemed to resonate with its own emptiness.
I stood by the side of the hand-carved tester bed that had been my
parents', my fingers resting on the phone, and looked out over the barn
roof and windmill and the fields that led down to the clay bluffs over
the river. Lightning with no sound quivered on a green hill in the west.
    I punched in Mary Beth Sweeney's number.
    'You mind my calling you?' I asked.
    'I'm happy you did.'
    The line hummed in the silence.
    'I know a Mexican restaurant that serves food you
only expect in the Elysian Fields,' I said.
    'Let's talk about it tomorrow.'
    'Sure,' I said.
    'I'm sorry, I don't mean to be like this…
That Mexican narc you were talking with? He's a bucket of shit. You
watch your butt, cowboy.'
    Watch your own. You're working for the G, Mary Beth,
I said to myself as I put down the receiver.
     
    That night I heard the doors on the
near end of the
barn slamming in the wind. I rolled over and went back to sleep, then
remembered I had closed the doors on the near end and had slipped the
cross planks into place to hold them secure. I put on a pair of khakis
and took a flashlight from the back porch and walked through the yard,
the electric beam angling ahead of me.
    One door fluttered and squealed on its hinges, then
sucked loudly against the jamb. I started to push the other door into
place, then I looked down the length of stalls, out in the railed lot
on the far side, and saw my Morgan trotting in a circle, wall-eyed with
fear, spooking at bits of paper blowing in the moonlight.
    'What's wrong, Beau? Weather usually doesn't bother
you,' I said.
    I got him into the barn and stroked his face, closed
the door behind him, and unscrewed the cap on a jar of
oats-and-molasses balls and poured a dozen into the trough at the head
of his stall.
    Then I saw the red, diagonal slash on his withers,
as though he had been struck a downward blow by a metal-edged
instrument.
    His skin wrinkled and quivered under my hand when I
placed it close to the wound.
    'Who did this to you, Beau?' I said.
    The electric lights in the barn were haloed with
humidity, glowing with motes of dust in the silence.
     
    At eight the next morning I drove to
the edge of
town, where Jack Vanzandt ran his business in a five-story building
sheathed in black glass. His office was huge, the beige carpet as soft
as a bear's fur, the furniture white and onyx black, the glass wall
hung with air plants.
    I sat in a stuffed leather chair, my legs crossed,
the purpose of my visit like a piece of sharp tin in my throat.
    'You want to buy some computer stock?' Jack asked,
and grinned.
    A door opened off to the side and Jack's wife walked
out of a rest room. I rose from my chair.
    'Hello, Emma, I didn't know you were here,' I said.
    'Good morning, sir. Where's your camera?' she said.
    'Maybe I should come back later. I didn't mean to
intrude upon y'all,' I said.
    'No, no, I'm delighted you came by. What's up?' Jack
said.
    'It's Darl.'
    'Unhuh?' Jack said.
    'I can't represent him.'
    They looked at me quizzically.
    'Can you tell me why?' Jack asked.
    'I have a conflict of interest. I was retained
earlier by Lucas Smothers. I think your son was at Shorty's the night
Roseanne Hazlitt was attacked.'
    'Probably half the kids in Deaf Smith were,' Jack
said.
    'Darl could end up as a witness at Lucas's trial,' I
said.
    I