Almost Midnight (19 page)

W
HILE WAITING FOR
Mary outside the Kettle Restaurant in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Darrell was starting to feel a little drowsy. He rolled down the front windows of the station wagon but not even the crisp mountain air succeeded in perking him up. It was still just nine-thirty. Mary’s shift wouldn’t finish for another half
hour. Might as well climb into the back of the wagon and grab some sleep.

He woke with Mary shaking him and saying, “Darrell, what happened to Louie?”

The little blond-haired dog was covered in soot and reeking of hickory smoke. It didn’t take them long to realize what had happened. Darrell had parked right next to an open barbecue pit in the lot across the street from the Kettle Restaurant. He’d tied Slick up before going to sleep but hadn’t bothered with Gretchen Louise. The little dog had jumped out the window and gotten into the pit and then come back while Darrell was still dozing. Mary didn’t say another word about it but she was obviously annoyed. It would take quite a bit of scrubbing to get the dog back to normal.

The scrubbing would have to wait until the next day. For now they had to find a place to spend the night. Since arriving in Glenwood Springs in late July, they’d been improvising, sleeping here one night, there another, never sticking around very long in any one place for fear of drawing attention to themselves. They’d camped out at roadside parks and along creek banks in the hills, sometimes venturing as far as Basalt, Aspen, and New Castle in their quest for privacy,
invisibility
.

Only once had they actually paid for a place to sleep. Their first night in Colorado they’d spent fifteen bucks for a trailer hookup at the Hideout, an old campground three miles from downtown Glenwood Springs. They hadn’t regretted it. The Hideout was a comfortably offbeat place, with a clear burbling creek and a clutch of rustic rental cabins. Back in the Roaring Twenties the oldest of the cabins had served as bordellos for railroad workers. If they hadn’t been running low on funds they would have enjoyed sticking around longer.

A day or two afterward Mary had landed the waitressing job at the Kettle Restaurant. For more than a month now, this had been their only source of income. It wasn’t much but it had kept them going. Mary’s tips were generally pretty good and she usually managed to salvage some leftovers from the kitchen at closing time.

Mary had sandwiches with her now, which they ate in silence driving east along the interstate. Feeling beat, they decided to crash for the night at a roadside picnic spot not far from Glenwood Springs.

The next morning Darrell suggested they go hiking up a steep, mile-long trail in Glenwood Canyon. Halfway up Mary said she’d had enough. She said she’d go back and wait in the car with the dogs. Darrell expressed surprise. Hadn’t she always told him that she hated quitters? He set out again on his own but before long Mary caught up with him. She said she’d changed her mind about giving up and wanted them to finish climbing the trail together. It was worth the effort. At the top they found a beautiful, crystal-clear pond with a small waterfall. The pond was known locally as Hanging Lake. They stood beside it, arm in arm, losing themselves in the scenery.

Darrell was pleased that the hike turned out well, that he and Mary were able to enjoy a moment of closeness by Hanging Lake. The truth was, moments of this sort had grown scarce in recent months. Since their latest flight from Missouri a certain tension had developed between them. Mary had become wary and distant. Sometimes Darrell sensed that she was afraid of him. But he couldn’t be sure: talking had never been Mary’s strong suit, at least not in her relationship with him. Since they’d gotten together he’d grown accustomed to searching for meaning in her every solitary word and gesture. But now he couldn’t seem to read her at all. He had lost the key to her moods.

It didn’t help that Darrell himself had fallen into a deep funk. He had thought, an eternity ago, that disposing of Lloyd would constitute a new lease on life. It hadn’t worked out that way. Most days he woke up depressed and confused, unsure of who he was or where he was headed. It was a gigantic effort simply washing and getting something to eat. And then there was the silent fuming, the anger he felt toward himself for not being able to find a job since the Mormons in Nevada, the anger he still felt toward Joyce and Donna and a dozen other people back home. It was always one or
the other, the depression knocking him down or the anger eating him up—never a day at peace.

There was something else, too, another cloud hanging over the two of them. They were experiencing sexual troubles: Darrell wasn’t able to perform as consistently as he was accustomed to. It had been a periodic problem since Missouri and it had him flummoxed. Here he was, with the woman of his dreams, and things weren’t always going according to program. Maybe all the stress he was under was canceling him out. Or perhaps it was payback for the drug and alcohol abuse. Making matters worse, they’d recently been forced to part with the pop-up camper. Needing money for food one weekend, they’d sold it to a woman at a gas station for a measly forty bucks. Now they didn’t even have a place to stretch out in private and give things a chance to come together naturally. It was frustrating,
damn frustrating
.

With several hours yet to kill before Mary started work they drove into town and made their way to Veltus Park. Over the past month or so this had been their regular afternoon hangout. It was a pretty spot, a splash of green against Roaring Fork River, oak and pine trees, a covered picnic area, a playground, and standing right in the middle of it all, an old defunct one-room jailhouse. If the weather was cooperative, they’d spread their bedrolls on the grass and catch some sleep. Sometimes Mary would wash her uniform in the river and hang it on a tree to dry.

There were times they wished they could have saved themselves a trip out of town after Mary got off work and crashed right here, or maybe at Twin Rivers Park less than a mile away. No chance of that though. Glenwood Springs was a spic-and-span tourist enclave and the local authorities were determined to keep it that way. The parks were off limits after nightfall and anyone caught trying to sleep in them was either arrested or hustled out of town. Transients (at least those without cars) were generally forced to spend nights by the train tracks along the Colorado River east of town, where they’d hunker down in a cave and wash up in one of the hot springs for which the area was famous. Come
September or October they’d hop a southbound freighter for warmer climates.

Darrell and Mary napped a bit and then made the short drive over to the Kettle Restaurant. Darrell said he’d pick her up later on. With time on his hands, he popped into a coffee shop and leafed through a newspaper thinking this might be the day he finally found a job. Nothing doing: not even a whisper of something he could take on.

After Mary cashed out they dropped by Doc Holliday’s, a bar on Main Street near the bridge. They’d been here once or twice before. Doc Holliday had died in Glenwood Springs and some of his original letters were preserved under glass on the wall by the phone. In one of them Doc describes how he and Wyatt Earp once drygulched a couple of guys up in Glenwood Canyon: shot them to death in their bedrolls as they slept.

Over beers Mary said she’d met somebody interesting that evening, a middle-aged man who sat in the restaurant drinking coffee for three or four hours straight, talking with her every chance he got. He told Mary that he was a missionary for a new religious group and that the group’s leader (“a great prophet”) was holding a meeting at a motel in town the next day. He invited her to come along. Now she wanted to know if Darrell would go with her. Darrell didn’t like the setup but he couldn’t see turning Mary down. He knew that she’d been grasping for meaning these past few months, desperately seeking some kind of personal salvation. She’d been reading the Book of Revelation from a Bible she’d picked up at a secondhand bookstore and she’d occasionally dropped hints about wanting to make a commitment to some higher purpose. Okay, he said, he’d go. But she shouldn’t be disappointed if he wasn’t swept off his feet.

When Darrell and Mary arrived the next day, about fifteen seekers were huddled in the motel room, some sitting on metal folding chairs, others on the floor against the walls. The Prophet, a gaunt white-haired man of about sixty with a long gleaming face, was sitting with his legs crossed on the edge of the single bed. He hurried
to his feet when he saw Mary and directed her to a chair in front that he’d apparently been saving in the event she showed up. (The missionary, slouched in a corner, must have told him about the delectable prospect he’d encountered at the restaurant the night before.) Darrell sat next to an attractive woman in a blue dress who gave no sign of even noticing him. She and the man beside her were leaning forward, hands clenched between their knees, faces frosty with anticipation, looking for all the world like they were ready to be raptured to heaven that very afternoon.

The Prophet smiled beatifically, held out his hands in welcome, and spoke in a voice deep and aching with concern, a voice for the ages.

Brothers and sisters, this is truly a blessing. I have come to give you guidance and you are here to receive it. Most of you are new. One or two of you have already learned what it means to walk in my shadow and lie down in the cold nights of despair with my heavenly burden
.

Still smiling, he cocked his head and looked coyly at the woman in blue. Darrell stole a sidelong glance. She was gushing with pleasure, appearing almost on the verge of fluttering away.

You’re here to receive my message but the forces of evil don’t want you to. They’re massing against me, spreading ugly rumors, trying to destroy me. But not just me: they’re out to destroy all of us here today and everything we stand to accomplish. There’s nothing surprising about this. The righteous have always been persecuted. This is the way of the world. In coming here today you’ve shown that you’re unhappy with the way of the world. You’re willing to risk a higher meaning, a greater truth …

Yow, this guy’s too much, Darrell thought. Look at him making eye contact, checking out the prospects, lingering on Mary, taking his time with it.

 … Brothers and sisters, our enemies, the enemies of truth—they want you to believe that I am soiled goods, a common sex criminal. But let me tell you, I didn’t even fight the charges that were brought against me, false and blasphemous as they were. I knew I had to walk
the path of suffering that had been laid out for me. I knew this was also the path of salvation …

Going right after Mary now. Not even bothering to disguise it. Going right after her with that voice of worn velvet, that patent-medicine smile. Trying to cut her out of the herd, Darrell thought.

 … I would stand out in the yard of that prison and look up at the four guard towers not realizing at first what they symbolized …

Darrell was zoning out, the message coming at him in disconnected fragments. He felt a hand brushing against his knee. It was the woman in blue, reading the handwriting on the wall, maybe, going for a consolation prize.

 … they were divine emissaries, these four Indians I met in prison. They had never told anyone else about their discovery: a clay tablet covered with sacred writing. They knew who I was even before I knew …

Now she was whispering something. Darrell shifted in his chair, his body language saying, uh-uh, not interested. The guy beside her was still leaning forward in rapt attention. The missionary got up and maneuvered his way into the bathroom.

 … a corner of the tablet was missing. It had broken off. According to ancient prophecy, someone would eventually come into possession of the missing corner. That person would be Jesus Christ the Messiah …

Let me guess, Darrell said to himself. I wonder who just happens to have that missing piece.

 … and so I was led, after my release, to a secret hiding place. And there it was. Brothers and sisters, there is no other way of putting it …

Pausing now, waiting for the toilet to finish flushing.

 … there is no other way of putting it, brothers and sisters. I am the Messiah
.

The next meeting, a few days later, Mary asked Darrell if he’d mind waiting outside with the dogs. She wanted to give it a go on her own. Darrell said okay but he advised her to be careful. He told her he’d read an article recently that said religious cults preyed on young people who were under stress and estranged from their families. She told him not to worry; she had the situation under control.

This second meeting was Mary’s last. She didn’t discuss it with Darrell afterward and he didn’t ask her about it. She simply let him know that she’d seen enough. In any event, they both knew that their days in Colorado were numbered. It was getting far too cold for sleeping outside. Arizona was beckoning again. This time, though, they planned on steering clear of Cottonwood.

E
VEN TOM MARTIN
, who wasn’t in the habit of taking anything for granted, was convinced by now that Darrell was his man. He’d run down all the local outlaws, checked their stories, and one by one eliminated them as possibilities. Only Darrell was left standing. There was something, however, that didn’t quite add up. If Darrell had been intent on killing Lloyd, why had he also killed Frankie and Willie? Why the three of them? Why not just the main guy?

Tom wasn’t the only person in local law enforcement perplexed by the sheer extravagance of the crime. Just that morning a veteran patrolman had popped into his basement office at Troop D headquarters for a chat. The two men talked about the deer-hunting season just starting up and then the patrolman switched to the Lawrence homicides. He said he’d heard that Darrell was at the top of the suspect list.

Tom shrugged, noncommittal.

“The thing I can’t figure out, Tommy, is the wife and the grandkid. Why take them out, too? This has got a lot of us scratching our heads. If Darrell just does Lloyd maybe it’s not such a big deal. Maybe there’s people lining up to pin a medal on him.”