Relentless

It didn’t matter. He could see Lisa clearly, her movements and poses and faces; he could hear the cadences of her voice and feel the warmth of their deep silences together, filled with confidences.

He put his hand in his pocket and closed the little velvet ring case in his fist.

Buck Stevens was writing the past hour up in his daybook. He was filling a lot of paper. In this business it was getting so you even had to make out reports on the reports you’d made out. Abruptly Stevens snapped the book shut and began to prowl again. “God damn it.”

“Take it easy now,” Jace Cu

They heard the helicopter coming and Watchman said, “You suppose they know where to land that thing?”

“All them Kanab pilots know the drill,” Cu

2

The FBI man emerged from the bubble canopy and ducked to walk under the decelerating blades. A good deal of light had drained out of the sky and a chilly wind blew across the bald hilltop; only midafternoon, but electric lights were already coming on at the smelter on the hillside and in the town below them. Buck Stevens had his hands rammed in his pockets and was stamping from foot to foot. He said out of the side of his mouth, “Look out now for that masked man. He looks like he carries silver bullets.”

“Dry up,” Watchman said.

The FBI man had a sleek tawny handsomeness, somewhat dated, as if he required a slick part in the center of his hair and a cutaway coat to be in his element. In fact he was packaged in the Bureau’s regulation gray suit, handkerchief in breast pocket, white shirt and subdued necktie. His shoes were absolutely brand new: stepping out of the helicopter he had revealed shiny tan leather soles, hardly scratched.

You could tell one by looking at him, always. The Bureau prescribed their standards of dress and stamped them like print-outs from a computer. Hair short, but not crew cut. Clean-shaven, short sideburns, exactly a quarter inch of white shirt cuff showing below the jacket sleeve. Side-vented jacket to allow quick access to the high-belted .38 in its stubby canted holster.

He had a rigid coin-slot mouth in repose but when he smiled he showed a double row of white teeth; the Bureau took them out of universities—all accountants and lawyers—and taught them to “look and act like gentlemen.” This one looked young and vinegary, as if he was up to date in his field: confident, almost jaunty.

“I’m Paul Vickers. Special Agent.” He had his I.D. wallet open in his left hand.

“Sam Watchman.”

Vickers’ handshake was perfunctory; perhaps he disliked being touched.

“This is Jace Cu

Cu

Watchman turned. “And Trooper Stevens. My partner.”

“Is he?” Vickers asked, and shook hands with Stevens. “That’s fine—that’s fine.” He turned, brisk, putting the wallet in his pocket and rubbing his hands together rapidly. “That your car over there? Maybe we can get inside out of this wind and then you can bring me up to date.”

Walking to the car Jace Cu

They climbed in and the four doors chunked shut. Stevens started the car and put it in low, crunching slowly down the steep gravel trail. The Special Agent asked a few questions to get things started. Watchman had not looked forward to a long-winded rehash of events but Vickers’ questions were compelling and logical; he knew his job. He listened expressionlessly, skeptically, with stony unimpressed eyes. It seemed to disconcert Cu

“That’s over to my office,” Cu

Stevens turned the corner. Vickers said, “It’s important that we get these fugitives and get them fast. In this kind of case you’ve got to do that—give the public an object lesson in quick justice, remind them that crime doesn’t pay.”

It had been an u

The cruiser slid in at the curb behind Cu

“More or less.” Cu

Vickers swept the room with his eyes. The old transceivers were stacked in the corner on an old table and microphone cords trailed over to the desk. The deputy constable at the radio table nodded to them and said, “Ain’t nothing come in since you left, Chief.”

But the phone was ringing and Buck Stevens, closest to it, picked up. “Police.”

Then Stevens went stiff and his eyes whipped around toward Watchman. They all swung to face the rookie. Stevens listened hard and spoke two or three times and finally said into the mouthpiece, “Hold on a second.” He lowered the receiver and cupped his palm over it. “Civil Air Patrol in Kanab. One of their scout planes reports a wrecked plane near the foothills about eighty miles west of here. Could be them.”

Vickers strode past Cu

Watchman glanced at Buck Stevens and surprised a look of anxious impatience on his face: Stevens was closing and opening his fists.

Vickers said into the phone, “That’s fine—that’s fine. Now I want to get as many airplanes and choppers into that sector as we can get launched before dark. I want to blanket the area with searchers. Can you get on through to Las Vegas and Nellis and Kingman and pass on those instructions on my authority?… Now, look, the storm can’t be all that bad over there if this scout plane of yours is still in the sector.… I see. All right, do your best. What’s your phone number up there?”