CHAPTER TWELVE
About two-thirty that afternoon, Satin arrived at the cabin to find Crockett sitting listlessly on the porch staring blankly at nothing. Nudge and Dundee were nowhere to be found.
“Hey,” she said softly, climbing the steps. It took Crockett a beat or two to focus.
“Hey, yourself,” he said. “Thought you and Danni would be staying in town.”
“Danni is. She’s gotta get up real early in the morning.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Uh-huh. She’s waiting tables on the breakfast shift at Wager’s Café. I can make a lot more money on the computer than I can slinging hash. From the looks of things, I’m gonna need it. Besides, Danielle hasn’t seen a sunrise from the top in years. Be good for her to get her butt outa bed at the beginning of the day for a change.”
“That’s true. A good work ethic is admirable in anyone, especially our nation’s youth.”
Satin looked at him for a moment. “Want some coffee?” she said.
“That’s okay.”
“Iced tea?”
“Naw.”
“Scotch?”
“I’m good.”
“Bullshit,” she said, and disappeared inside. A moment later she reappeared and handed Crockett a squat drinking glass half full of ice cubes, then left the porch and circled to the rear of the cabin. When she returned, she was breaking the seal on a liter bottle. She pulled the canvas chair in front of where Crockett sat in the swing and poured three fingers of a golden brown liquid into the glass.
“Drink that.”
Crockett took a sip, blinked, and took another sip. “Jesus,” he said.
“Good, huh?”
“This isn’t Glenlivet,” Crockett said.
“Nope. Twenty-five year old Glenfarclas.”
“Glenfarclas? Christ, woman. This stuff is expensive.”
“No skin off my nose. It was a gift. Like it?”
“Like it? Ambrosia! Nectar of the gods. You always carry around a two hundred dollar bottle of scotch?”
“Special occasion,” Satin replied. “If you’re gonna be all depressed, I’d just as soon you were drunk. That way I’ve got an excuse to get sloshed, and your depression won’t get me all depressed, too.”
“Where’s your glass?”
“I’ll drink out of yours. That way we can bond without me having to pick lice outa your fur.”
“Good choice.”
“I know you used to have a psychologist around to help you out at times like these. Scotch is the best I can do.”
Crockett held out his glass. “Drink up,” he said.
An hour and a half bottle later they were sitting in the swing together, both pleasantly warm on the best whisky Crockett had ever tasted. Satin broke the silence.
“You blew him up, didn’t ya?”
“Did I?”
“Saw it on the noon news before I came out. Figured it had to be you since Danni said you were gone all night.”
“I was visiting my sister in Spearfish. You can call her.”
“You did a hard thing for a good reason, Crockett.”
“Seems like I’ve done a lot of that the past few years.”
“If not you, who?”
“For nearly twenty years after I stopped being a cop, I was violence free.”
“From what I hear, you were pretty much life free, too. Rolled up in a ball. Kinda like those little bugs.”
“What bugs?”
“Whatever you call ‘em. Lift up a rock and there they are. As soon as the light hits ‘em, they tuck up in a ball and hope to hell nobody notices them. You know. Crockett bugs.”
“You got this figured out, huh?”
“Carson told me about you. She and Ruby talked a lot.”
“Telephone, telegraph, tell a…well, you know.”
“Hard to keep secrets from people who love you, Davey.”
Crockett smiled and handed Satin the glass. “Don’t think I wanna keep secrets from you, kid,” he said.
“So you blew Train up last night.”
“Yeah. Very heroic. I sat two blocks away and pushed a button.”
“That’s a lot closer than I would have wanted to be to the sonofabitch. I figure you saved Danni’s life.”
“Maybe.”
“And probably some other people’s lives, too. People he had yet to kill.”
“Maybe.”
Satin sipped the scotch and peered at him. “Did you like it?”
“What?”
“Did you like it? Did you enjoy killing the guy?”
“No.”
“Well all right then,” Satin said, handing the glass back.
Crockett swirled the liquor and ice for a moment. “That’s my redemption, is it?”
“Sure,” Satin said. “You’re a good man. If you liked killing people, that would not be the case.”
“I liked killing Rachael’s father.”
“That was revenge. He killed his daughter, for crissakes! A woman you loved, I might add. Besides, you didn’t kill him. His dogs did that.”
“Yeah, but I turned them loose. I was the cause of his death.”
Satin smiled. “That’s okay, Crockett,” she said. “You’re making up for it.”
“I am?”
“Sure. You’re the cause of my life.”
It was just getting dark and the two of them were nearly comatose when Crockett shifted his shoulder under Satin’s neck and stopped the swing.
“A gift?” he asked.
“Hmmm?” Satin’s reply was full of sleepiness.
“You got that scotch as a gift?”
“Never comes the day when I’ll spend a hundred and eighty bucks on a bottle of booze.”
“A gift from who, uh, whom, if I may ask?”
“Jealous?”
“A little.”
“A guy.”
“That’s it? Just a guy?”
“His name was Shane. I knew him a few years ago. He was a nice man. He bought me the scotch because he thought I’d enjoy it.”
“And?”
“And, knowing the male of the species as I do, because he also thought it might result in sexual favors.”
Crockett nodded. “Us hairy-knuckle types’ll make huge sacrifices if we think it might be part of foreplay.”
Satin let that one float. Crockett was patient. Finally she spoke up.
“At this point, and before you ask any more questions,” she said, “you might do well to remember that the scotch was unopened when I arrived, and that I brought it for you.”
Crockett stared into the growing dark for a moment. “So,” he said, “the question remains. Is this bottle part of foreplay?”
Satin got to her feet. “Why don’t you shut up and come upstairs.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Your chance to earn the scotch.”
Crockett smiled. “Help me up,” he said.
*****