High White Sun Read online

  The car that dropped them off—the Grand Marquis with the bullet holes—went by twice before sliding into a spot of its own farther down across the street, windows down. Harp thought the driver was that kid Hero, sitting way back in the car’s shadows, watching the department with his face hidden behind sunglasses, but there was no way to be sure.

  As Harp watched and waited, the two men, John Wesley Earl’s brother, T-Bob, and his older son, Jesse—two of the last people to ever see Billy Bravo alive—finished their cigarette and got ready to walk in. While T-Bob ground out the butt on the cement with his silver-tipped boots, Jesse Earl glanced back once at the Grand Marquis, like he was studying the car, or its driver, but whatever he was thinking was impossible to tell from the expression on his face.

  * * *

  • • •

  HARP WANTED TO START WITH T-BOB, and didn’t want to wait.

  Chris was at Hancock Hill visiting Tommy, and Buck and Till and the others were scattered to the wind, so without wasting a shitload of time getting one of them back to the department, there was no way for Harp to keep Amé from helping him with the interviews. And he really didn’t want to waste any time with these two, or give them time enough to have second thoughts. He’d handle the questioning and she could take notes, which wasn’t strictly necessary, since Chris had updated the department’s lone interview room with recording equipment, but if he told her to hang back and watch through the remote, she might punch him the same way she’d hit Avalos. And she’d already seen T-Bob and Jesse walk in, so she was circling Harp like a hawk, working tighter and tighter spirals, getting closer to the ground and making ready to land on him. She knew as well as he did that Chris had mandated that even with the video system, there always had to be two deputies present in any interview, for safety as much as anything else, so if Harp tried to do it alone, Amé would probably 911 the sheriff and raise holy hell.

  Claws out, hiding a thin victory smile, she had him, and they both knew it, so he gave up without a fight but with a whole lot of cussing under his breath, and told her to get the goddamn interview room ready.

  The room itself was a sterile affair, all military gray, with a small table and uncomfortable chairs and the video camera tucked up high in the corner; just another kind of hawk sitting on a pole surveying everything beneath it. There was also a No Smoking placard in both Spanish and English on the far wall, right in the sight line of the person being questioned, and at odds with the small black ashtray from Earlys on the table. If a man got suddenly nervous, like he had something worthwhile to say and was just searching for a way to do it, Harp would let him smoke to his heart’s content if he asked; he long ago had learned that a confessing man, like a movie actor, needed something to do with his hands while he spun his story. But if people were difficult or stonewalled, Harp would just lean back and point to the placard, with that empty ashtray still there to taunt them, no matter how many times they asked for a smoke.

  He left Jesse Earl out in the waiting area, flipping through a True West magazine, and got T-Bob a small coffee, noticing the man’s hands tremble as he handed it to him. Not nerves, but the shakes of a chronic drinker. T-Bob probably hadn’t had a sip since leaving Killing, and his body was already yelling at him about it. For a moment, Harp almost changed his mind—starting with Jesse instead, so he could lock the pair into what should be a more solid, coherent story, or at least a damn good lie, before picking it apart with T-Bob. But he was already steering T-Bob, who was badly listing to port, toward the interview room, and he didn’t want to waste any more time. You can’t finish what you don’t start.

  Harp had also grabbed his own spiral notebook and pen, even though he wasn’t going to take notes or write down anything at all.

  He just needed something to do with his hands, too.

  * * *

  • • •

  ALTHOUGH HE DIDN’T STRICTLY NEED to do it, not yet anyway, Harp Mirandized T-Bob, slipping it in casually and trying not to make a big deal about it. If the man started to bury himself and was willing to write out a statement, Harp might do it again, but he hoped the first warning, captured on camera and witnessed by Amé, would be enough.

  But talking to T-Bob proved as hard as catching bait minnows in your bare hands—the words were all slippery, kept jumping around and never staying still. Yes, T-Bob had been to the Wikiup to drink; in fact, he’d been there several times. No, he’d never had any trouble there. Yes, he’d met Billy Bravo, but no, he didn’t know anything about Billy and Jesse having words with each other. And yes, they were there that last night with Billy, but no, he couldn’t remember exactly when they’d left. Only that when they had walked out, both of them, Billy had still been there at the bar, healthy and happy, throwing ’em back.

  That he was very clear about. It was the only thing he remembered good and sharp.

  Burned out . . . that was the phrase that came to Harp’s mind. The thin old man, with his grizzled hair and the flames tattooed on his torched, sunburned skin, was like a used matchstick. He hadn’t done any real time, and claimed he didn’t know much about the Aryan Brotherhood or any prison gangs like that, even though the ink peeking out at the wrists and neck of his T-shirt told a slightly different story. He said that was all of his brother’s doings, John Wesley, so they’d have to ask him about it. But even as he said it, he stole a glance in Amé’s direction, and seemed uncomfortable with her there. And when Harp asked why he and his brother and all the others were in Killing to begin with, it was the first time T-Bob seemed purposefully evasive. More than just the drunk shakes, he talked faster, those fish really jumping, without saying much of anything at all. Listening to him made Harp’s head hurt.

  There was one last thing, and that was the bruises Harp noticed on T-Bob’s forehead, spreading around his right eye. When asked about it, T-Bob admitted his brother had done it to him. They’d gotten into a fight about a whole lot of nothing, and it wasn’t unusual for him and his brother to settle up arguments like that with their fists. You know how it is, family and all, is how T-Bob left it, with a shrug of his shoulders. And as much as Harp wanted those marks to have been made by Billy Bravo’s hands, it was the one thing T-Bob said he actually believed. Being family with a man like John Wesley Earl probably brought with it a whole host of burdens and bruises.

  He had Amé take a close-up picture of them with her cell phone camera all the same.

  And just before they wrapped up, when T-Bob asked about a cigarette, wondering if it’d be okay if he slipped a quick one, Harp pointed at that sign and closed his blank notebook.

  * * *

  • • •

  JESSE EARL MIGHT HAVE BEEN GOOD-LOOKING, if not for the Texas stars inked all around his neck, circling the words LIE OR DIE and GOD FORGIVES BROTHERS DON’T; or the small dark tombstone cross underneath his left eye. An eye that was a startling, serious blue. Jackie might have called it movie-star blue, and she had loved her movies, as well as the magazines about them, filled with stories about her favorite Hollywood stars. She’d flip through them, maybe breaking down to buy just one, while checking out with their groceries and humming whatever last Eagles song she’d heard on the radio. Harp didn’t like much in the way of modern movies or music, but he’d never minded the Eagles. He still had Jackie’s iPod in his apartment, along with a stack of magazines he’d picked up for her when she last went into the hospital. He’d bought every one he could get his hands on for a week straight—National Enquirer, OK!, Us Weekly, People—driving in the middle of the night as far as Big Spring and Lamesa and Pecos and even Hobbs, New Mexico, just to see if the stores there had new or different ones. Knowing it was foolish, just to give his hands and his mind something to do. Now they were all in a taped-up box by his bed he couldn’t throw out but could never bring himself to open again. He’d read them a hundred times right after she was gone, holding the pages the same way she once had, also listening to all
of her songs over and over again, but it was those damn magazines that were always going to haunt him—the dates on their fading covers forever fixing the time of her passing.

  Jesse slid back in the chair his uncle had been perched in only moments before, taking it over, with his hands spread out in front of him. Not afraid to show off the other tattoos that Bravo’s girlfriend had remembered: the word HATE on the knuckles of his right hand, the numbers 1488 on his left. Harp had looked up the numbers and knew the fourteen stood for the “Fourteen Words” that made up the Neo-Nazi belief: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. The eight was the eighth letter of the alphabet—H. Stamped twice, it meant Heil Hitler. Harp wasn’t sure about T-Bob, but pegged Jesse as a true believer. Not just because of the Nazi crosses and lightning bolts all over his skin, but because of those damn blue eyes. They were a different color from his daddy’s, brighter by a few degrees, but they held the same, indifferent, killing stare. Like the way he kept looking right through Amé, who watched him right back, unblinking. He regarded her the way you might a dog you were going to put down.

  Harp knew his first instinct had been right all along, and after today he needed to keep her away from these men—all of them, but this one most of all.

  Harp tried the same Miranda game, but Jesse and his hardened eyes knew better, so he let it go.

  Instead Harp backed up, starting again from a different angle, pointing to the edges of large, identical tattoos just visible on both wrists. “What’s that on your arms?”

  Jesse smiled wide; slowly, proudly, pulling up both sleeves on his T-shirt to reveal the huge tattoos of six-shooters on the inside of each forearm, the twin muzzles pointed across the table at Harp and Amé. They were just as Billy Bravo’s girlfriend had described them, right down to the skull in one palm and the bullets in the other. “I got these when I was sixteen. They’re Colt .45 Peacemakers, just like Jesse James used to carry.”

  “Your daddy name you that? Name you after him?”

  Jesse nodded, slow. “He was around long enough for that, before he went up for a piece.”

  Even in that small exchange, Harp caught something buried deep, anger masked as indifference, when Jesse mentioned Earl. “What about your brother?”

  “Little B? His Christian name is Bass.”

  “Like Sam Bass?” Harp laughed. “So you’re Jesse, and your daddy is John Wesley? I guess right there we’ve got ourselves a family of outlaws.”

  Jesse smiled again. “You could say that, yep.”

  Harp tapped his pen, as if a thought had just come to him. “You hate niggers, Jesse?”

  The smile flickered. “Come again?”

  Harp leaned back, relaxed. “It’s okay, son, we’re just talking, shooting the shit. No offense meant. But I’m just wondering if you hate niggers . . . kikes, Chinks. Beaners, wetbacks . . . you know, whatever?” Harp pretended to consult his spiral notebook, empty, without notes. “That’s what all that white power shit all over your skin means, right? It means you hate people that aren’t white, that aren’t like you.” Harp leaned forward again. “Like Billy Bravo’s girlfriend, maybe.”

  Jesse glanced toward Amé and back again. “Shit, I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

  Harp looked again at his notebook. “I got people who say you do, Jesse, a whole bunch of folks. They all saw you at the Wikiup, you and your uncle and that other fucking retard, what’s his name, Joker? They say you had some words with Billy about his girl. That you were going on and on about her being a wetback. That would seem to fit, right? Heil Hitler and all that shit.”

  “I can’t remember what that was all about. It was whiskey talk. Barroom bullshit. It was nothin’. Shootin’ the shit, as you say.”

  “Okay, so why don’t you tell us what all that shit was about? Why don’t you tell me and Deputy Reynosa here exactly what you said to Billy Bravo about his Hispanic girlfriend?”

  Jesse spun the ashtray in front of him in circles. Those blue eyes danced. “Well, sir, I might have said something about her having an awful nice pair of tits. Just like this here Deputy Reynosa,” Jesse continued, looking Amé up and down and giving her a wink. “You can still be a wetback and have nice tits.”

  Harp looked to Amé for a reaction, but she was as still as stone, as if she’d never heard the words. He hadn’t meant to draw Jesse’s attention to her, but he was down that rabbit hole now. He had been purposefully prodding the son of a bitch, trying to get him angry, trying to get him to slip up, because anything he revealed now might prove important later. And he was mad at himself for giving Jesse even this small opening at Amé. However, just like he’d argued with Chris, she was smart enough for the both of them. Her face said it all: she wasn’t going to compound his mistake by pulling another Avalos.

  Interrogation was an art, not a science. He’d always been good at it, having a natural knack or a feel for slipping into whatever role was needed to get someone to bury themselves, to admit to whatever horrible shit they’d done. Father, friend, priest. But that was before he found himself constantly distracted by stray thoughts of Jackie, before he started finding himself tired and slow, like he had at Killing.

  Maybe I am getting too old for this.

  Jesse was still talking. “You say you been hearing from folks about me? Well, I been hearing some stuff, too. Like how half this damn town is wet. What’s that they call it around here, Beantown? Right over the tracks, back there.” Jesse thumbed in the air behind him. “We passed it coming here, smelled it, in fact.” He focused on Harp, but was really talking to Amé. “Is that what you’re into? Little spic girls, like Billy?”

  Harp clenched his notebook and held his breath for a ten count, wondering if he was going to be the one this time around to punch someone’s ticket. Once, another, younger Ben Harper might have thrown this boy’s ass out of the chair and across the room, just to get his point across and get his attention, but he wouldn’t do that now, not in front of Amé. Instead he said, “You and T-Bob were at the Wikiup the night Billy Bravo died.”

  Jesse shrugged. “If you say so, if all these mysterious folks you keep talking about say so.”

  “Yeah, well, they do. I do. And so does your uncle, as a matter of fact. See, he’s already admitted you were both drinking that night at the bar, and then later that same evening, someone goes and busts Billy’s head in. Leaves him to bleed out and die in the desert . . .”

  “That’s a damn way to die, to be sure.”

  Harp agreed. “But you don’t know anything about that, do you?”

  Jesse stared at him. “I already said I know nothing about that. Nothin’ at all. Less than I know about this here beaner’s tits. But ask me that again, and you might be askin’ it to my lawyer. The one I’m due, like you was goin’ on about at the beginning.”

  “Do I need to do that, Jesse? Get you a lawyer? You want one? Need one?”

  Jesse shrugged. “Just sayin’, I watch some TV.”

  “Watch closer. You walked in here to see me, son, all on your own. All I did was ask.”

  Jesse stood, slow, and stretched, aiming his tattooed guns at the ceiling. “Well then, I guess I can walk right the fuck out again.”

  Harp hesitated. Art not science . . . They were at a line in the sand . . . cross it or not? If he told Jesse to sit the fuck back down—that he wasn’t quite free to leave yet—then they were dealing with a full-blown custodial interrogation, and Harp probably would be getting the mouthy SOB a lawyer before his ass hit the seat. Without a doubt Jesse would shut the hell up then . . . he had seen enough TV to know that. Or his daddy had done enough time to teach him.

  Harp could hear a clock in his head, ticking away—it seemed like he heard it all the time now—while Jesse waited for Harp or Amé to open the door.

  But before Harp could say anything, it was Amé who spoke first.

&nb
sp; Soft, but steady and firm.

  “Her name’s Vianey . . . that beaner you keep talking about. I know she means nothing to you. But what if I said someone came back to the Wikiup later that night after Vianey first left the bar . . . a lot later? She was worried about Billy, so she called up one of his friends to go back and help him home. He was a big man, and there was no way she could do that herself.” Amé kept her eyes on the paper in front of her, writing something while she spoke.

  Jesse looked down at her, head cocked to one side, face unreadable.

  “If she had done that, what do you think that person . . . Billy’s friend . . . would have seen?” Amé asked.

  Jesse hesitated. Opened his mouth, closed it again, like a fish. “A friend, huh? Another one of your mysterious folks, right? You know, I got no idea.”

  “Yo creo que sí,” she said, finally looking up at him.

  “What did that bi—” Jesse started, but stopped himself. His eyes shot back and forth between Amé and Harp. He pointed at her, but addressed him. “What did she say?”

  “Well, I’m not exactly sure, since I don’t fucking speak Spanish, but I’m pretty sure she said you’re a lying piece of shit. She also said we’re probably going to get a warrant for your blood, Jesse. You see, Billy put up quite a fight before he died. Lots of blood under his fingernails, that sort of thing. Blood, DNA. Just like you’ve seen on TV. She said she thinks the two of you squared off that night and you killed him, and so do I.” It was a pure bluff, doubling down on Amé’s suggestion that someone in Terlingua might be able to place Jesse at Billy’s body at the time he died. It was less than nothing, but for the moment, it was all they had.

  Silence ticked on, and it was during this moment that guilty men most often got nervous, all edgy; this was when Harp could usually tell if they were going to start talking or not.