YEARS AGO, IN THE first acting class he’d ever taken, the teacher had urged her students to practice expressions in front of the mirror. Pain, pleasure, rage, love, hate, envy—Bernhardt had dutifully practiced them all. Because facial expressions, after all, were an important part of his stock in trade. Therefore, out of habit, he kept a running inventory of his own expressions.
So that now, listening to this petty, officious, stuck-up asshole of a less-than-thirty-year-old sheriff’s deputy, he could vividly imagine his own expression: a mixture of exasperation and frustration and anger and—yes—probably desperation, fueled by fear.
“What I’m really getting at, sir,” the deputy was saying, “is that we don’t have the personnel. I mean, we’ve got a population of less than two thousand people, here—five, six thousand, during the season. So there’s the sheriff and the deputies, and that’s it, ’round the clock. And right now there’s just me, on duty. Now—” The deputy took a half step forward, then resumed his stiff, regimental stance, arms rigid at his sides, chin lifted, chest arched. “Now. I’ll certainly check. I’ll certainly make it a point to check here at the Ram’s Head, check the grounds. And I’ll tell my relief, too, tell him to drive through here. He comes on at one A.M. I’ll fill him in, and tell him to come by on his very first round.” Now the fresh, scrubbed-looking face broke into a fatuous smile, a smile that was calculated to. reassure the timid. “But—” Projecting a regret that was obviously fake, he shook his beautifully barbered head. “But I just can’t get someone assigned here all night, sir. That would mean authorizing special time. And the truth is, I just don’t have that authority.”
“And you won’t call the sheriff.”
Again, the other man regretfully shook his head. “Sorry, sir. If we were talking about—you know—some real, live problem, or a highway accident, something like that, if d be a different situation. But we’re talking about suspicion, here. You—ah—” He hesitated, then said, “You said you’re an investigator, sir. So you should be able to understand what I’m talking about. I mean, we’ve got guidelines, here. Strict guidelines. Just like you do in San Francisco, I’m sure.”
Bernhardt drew a long, deep breath as he looked at Betty Giles. She sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast. Dejected. Scared, and dejected.
“What you should understand, Deputy Foster,” Bernhardt said, “is that as soon as you leave, I’m going to write up a complete account of our conversation, everything that was said. So—” Grimly, he paused, compelling the younger man’s reluctant, long-suffering attention. “So if I were you, and anything should happen here tonight, I’d advise you to find that report, and flush it down the toilet. Otherwise, sure as hell, your ass will be in a sling. Do I make myself clear?”
The cherubic mouth tightened, but the parade-ground stance held. The other man’s Adam’s apple bobbed once, though, before the chin lifted an officious half inch, and the brown eyes raised to focus on Bernhardt’s forehead.
“Yes, sir,” came the answer.
“Good—” Bitterly, Bernhardt gestured to the door. “Well, Deputy Foster, you’d better be getting back in your car. There’s no telling what could be happening, out there.”
“Now, sir, there’s no call to—”
“I do have one more bit of advice for you, though,” Bernhardt said. He let a heavily ladened beat pass. Then: “If I were you, and I saw a black man of about thirty, driving a black Camaro with a California license plate, I’d use extreme caution. Because he’ll be armed and dangerous. Will you try to remember that, Deputy Foster?”
Once more, the Adam’s apple bobbed. But, a disappointment, the reply came quietly, steadily, with studied indifference to Bernhardt’s anger. “Yes, sir, I will.”
With the only illumination coming from the small ground-level lights set along the driveway, it was dark enough to let him walk between the cabins without fear of being noticed, being remembered. To someone watching, he’d just be a shadowy figure moving among the low-growing trees and the tall, clustered cacti they called ocotillo. They’d think he was a motel guest, out for a walk, keeping off the driveway because he liked everything natural. Or he could be taking a short cut between the motel office, where he’d gotten ice, and his cabin, where he had someone waiting for him—someone ready to take off her clothes after one more drink, a woman he’d found in a bar, a white woman, stepping out on her husband, some rich movie company executive.
“Imagination,” Venezzio had always said, “that’s what makes the difference. You imagine what the other people think they’re seeing, not what it feels like they’re seeing.”
Because most people beat themselves, that’s what Venezzio was saying. A cop stops you for speeding, you think it’s the big one, the end of the line—come out shooting, get killed. It’s not the police that beat you, it’s yourself, your own imagination. If you feel like everyone’s looking at you, suspicious, that’s how you act. And that’s how they got caught, the other ones—everyone but him.
So, walking easily, play-acting, he stepped out from behind a cactus, crossed the graveled driveway, and walked in front of her car to the rear of her cabin, into the shadow of a small tree that grew twenty feet behind her cabin. He checked his watch: ten minutes after eleven. Forty minutes ago, the sheriff left, drove away in his squad car.
Meaning that, soon, he’d probably be back, checking. That much he’d heard: that the deputy would come back.
Listening at the open crack of the small screened bathroom window, standing on tiptoe so he could just see into the dark bathroom with its half-open door, he’d heard them talking: the woman, a few words only, and the deputy, talking tight-ass, and the tall, dark-haired man, coming on strong. He’d only been able to pick up a few words, one word out of five, maybe. He could’ve heard more, if he’d been able to move around to the south side of the cabin, press his ear to the window glass in the living room. But he couldn’t risk it, even for a minute, in plain view from the office, and even from the highway, beyond the driveway.
They’d called the sheriff, that much was clear, even one word in five. And the deputy wasn’t buying their story, that was clear, too. Whatever they wanted, whatever they were selling, the deputy wasn’t buying. And five minutes later, the deputy was gone. He hadn’t even walked around the cabin, checked it out. He’d just gotten back in the car, and driven through the grounds on the one-way driveway, then driven off toward town. And the man and the woman had been pissed. Badly pissed. And scared, too. Badly scared.
He’d been ready, if the deputy had come checking. He’d been ready with a plan, thinking ahead. He would have fallen back—like soldiers did, in battle, fallen back to a prepared position: his car, hidden behind the small stand of trees that grew in a dry gulch, about two hundred feet in back of the split rail fence. He would have gotten in the car, gotten behind the wheel, with the UZI in his lap and the Woodsman on the seat beside him, both guns loaded and cocked, safeties off, the silencer on the Woodsman, screwed down tight. He’d heard enough through the bathroom window to know that there’d be no backup for the deputy. So it would’ve been one on one, him and the deputy. He would’ve pretended to slump over behind the steering wheel, maybe drunk, maybe dead. Both windows would’ve been open, ready. And when the deputy came alongside, he’d get a face full of high-speed .22 hollow points: three, four of them—and one more, through the temple.
Then, quickly, he would’ve reloaded the Woodsman, and put it back in its holster. He would’ve taken the UZI, and gone back to the cabin. Maybe he would’ve thrown a trash can through the floor-to-ceiling living-room window and gone in behind it, using the UZI. He’d done that before, wild west, shooting up everything: a union vice president and his wife and daughter, all of them watching TV, fat and happy. He’d used one clip to put the three of them down, then used another clip to make sure they stayed down. Five, ten seconds, that’s all it had taken.
Or maybe he would’ve tried the front door, tried to kick it in, always a risk. Because if he had a gun in there, the dark-haired man, and the night chain held for even one kick, then it was a shootout, kill or be killed. And if the room was dark, with him in the doorway, outlined, the odds could be too long. One lucky shot, and that was the end.
From where he stood, he could see the east side of the cabin, the bathroom side, with the one tiny window. He could see the south side, too, with the chest-high window. But he couldn’t see the front of the cabin, the side that faced the office and the pool, the side with the picture window, and the door. And it was through them, through the window or the door, that he had to go in. Either the picture window, behind the trash can—or the door, kicked in.
And every minute, the odds changed. Plus and minus, kill or be killed, the odds changed.
If he did it now, right now, with the room still light, everyone was a target, a disadvantage. But the sooner he did it, the less chance that the sheriff would find the Camaro, hidden behind the trees.
If he waited—one hour, two hours, even three hours—and if they went to sleep inside, both of them in bed, then his chances improved. Five seconds through the window, while they were waking up, and five seconds with the UZI, rat-a-tat-tat, and he was out of there, making for the Camaro, the empty clip in his pocket, a full clip in the gun, ready. Thirty seconds to the Camaro, and another three, four minutes out of town, driving carefully, conservatively. Fifty thousand richer, another satisfied customer.
But between now and then, once or twice, maybe more, the sheriff would come by, checking. It was guaranteed, that he’d come by. And if the Camaro was discovered, everything changed. Without a car, carrying three guns, on foot, he might as well be an animal with no place to hide, running off across the desert.